


Don't Die in Your Hometown

by indevan



Series: Rock Band AU [2]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Drunkenness, F/F, F/M, Filthy, Found Family, M/M, Wild Behavior, rowdy boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-07 02:55:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 41,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11614416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: It’s been years since high school, when Turles said they should form a band.  Kakarrot thinks they haven’t gotten that far.  They’re signed to a teeny, independent label with a manager who can just afford to take them out to coffee every month





	1. First of All

**Author's Note:**

> this is probably going to be some kind of monster if the amount of character tags didn't clue you in so, uh--yeah

The crowd is like a wave.  Like he’s standing on the beach and feeling it wash over him.  This powerful, powerful thing strong enough to destroy him but makes him feel invincible at the same time.  It’s been years since high school, when Turles said they should form a band.  When they started out in his detached garage, fucking around with secondhand instruments.  He thinks they haven’t gotten that far.  They’re signed to a teeny, independent label with a manager who can just afford to take them out to coffee every month.  It’s nothing to him, though.  He likes the stage at the bar where they perform three times a week.  He likes just chucking his stuff into Turles’s van and going a town or two over.

Even onstage, he can smell the stale beer and old smoke of the bar.  Smoking’s been banned inside for years but they never replaced the carpets and the smell lingers.  His senses always seem far more attuned to everything onstage.  Sweat, smoke, beer.  He can hear every nuance in the music, even when one of them messes up.  He can hear the crowd shouting lyrics--their lyrics--back at them.

The microphone smells like his own breath radiating back at him as he puts his lips to it.  Everything is centered and wild at once.  He loves the feeling.  He’s a balloon tethered but being buffeted by the wind.  The roll of drums and fuzz of the guitar feedback.  The tapping keyboards in the background.  His own voice echoing around him, hoarse from singing.

He pulls back and somehow locks eyes with Vegeta.  At that same moment, the guitars blend together seamlessly.  They’ve practiced it for hours, years, sitting on overturned milk crates in Turles’s garage, bent with their foreheads pressed together.  There’s no lead and no rhythm, just an interwoven sound.

The show’s over too soon and the crowd is screaming.  Hands are grabbing at the stage.  Someone runs off with their setlist from where it was taped.  The bartender says something about their local boys and their new EP.  Everything immediately after a show is a blur until he’s at the bar with a beer in his hand, getting mobbed by sweet things and kids with wildly dyed hair.  It’s a brush with fame, one he never thought he’d have.  Some of his old classmates brag that they sat next to him in trig or biology but he remembers the most they ever spoke to him was to ask if he had a spare piece of paper.

A sweaty arm is suddenly wrapped around his shoulders and his brother is here.  He spins a drumstick on one hand and grins like he’s accepting a Grammy.

“Let us breathe, okay?” he says to the upturned faces. “We can chill later.”

This seems to placate them.  Raditz turns and thrusts his drumstick down into the pocket of his torn jeans.

“How you doin’, Kakarrot?”

He shrugs and sips his beer.  It’s Natty Boh and it makes him wrinkle his nose but the bartender, Shugesh, lets them drink for free so he can’t complain.  He’s known them forever, since he and Raditz were kids.  He’s friends with their dad and he would come to the trailer to drink beer and smoke what kid-Kakarrot thought were cigarettes in the backyard.

“We sounded good,” he says finally.

Raditz nods sagely.  He and Vegeta can play at being frontmen and they write the songs, write the music, but he thinks that his brother is the heart of the band.  He’s the pulse and beat from where he sits, backing them all from behind.

“You fucked up the chord progression between ‘Nowhere’ and ‘Bloody Mess.’”

Vegeta’s always the bearer of bad news.  He hops up on a stool and Shugesh hands him the same beer as Kakarrot has.  He pushes it away.

“If I wanted to drink piss, I’d take a cup into the bathroom.”

Shugesh shakes his head but he’s known Vegeta nearly as long, knows he acts like dethroned royalty, and gives him something darker.

“No one noticed,” Raditz says. “I didn’t.”

“ _ I _ noticed,” he insists.

Turles materializes out of the crowd and wraps his arm around Vegeta’s neck.  He shoves him off and bares his teeth, which just makes their bassist laugh.

“That’s what happens when you put a perfectionist in a punk band.”

“There’s being punk and there’s fucking up on simple shit.” Vegeta takes a long drink from his beer. “Right, Broly?”

Kakarrot didn’t hear him come up but there he is, tall and sullen, standing a little bit behind Raditz’s shoulder.  Broly’s never liked him, so he isn’t sure why he joined their band.  He gets on alright with Turles and Raditz, though, so maybe that’s why.

“How did I sound?” he asks, voice low and mumbling.

Raditz rolls his eyes. “Don’t pull that shy-guy thing.  You’re a freaking genius and you always sound good.”

For some reason, that makes Broly blush.  He shakes his head at the beer Shugesh offers him and sits down on a stool.

“I’m ready to party,” Turles says, eyes flashing in the dim lights of the bar. “Let’s go.”

Raditz shakes his head.

“We have to wait for Nappa.”

Nappa used to be in the band but when they signed to their label, the manager said six members is too many and out he went.  He always kind of stood out, being ten years older than them, but it felt bad giving him the boot considering he’s still their friend.  He stuck around, though, as a roadie and general keeper of their well being.  Kakarrot figures they need that.  Not a single one of them, even Broly, has an ounce of impulse control.

Turles snatches up Broly’s discarded beer and starts to chug.  Beer drips down from the rim of the glass onto his shirt but he doesn’t seem to notice.  Of them all, Turles most looks the part of a punk rocker with his at-home tattoos and piercings.  Most of the time Kakarrot feels like a kid playing pretend.  For good measure, Turles grabs the beer Vegeta turned his nose at and starts to drink that, too.

“Chill, maybe?” Raditz arches his brows.

“This shit’s water beer.  Please.” He rolls his eyes.

There’s a tension that goes between them and Kakarrot feels bad that he’s the one who sorta caused it.  It’s not like he  _ meant _ to sleep with Turles, his brother’s longtime on-again, off-again boyfriend, but he did.  Now they’re set permanently to “off” and claim to be friends but then there’s moments like this.  Moments during practice when they start hurling insults and guitar picks at one another and the rest of them have to either get involved or run for cover.

He’s pulled from his reverie when he notices that Vegeta’s staring at him in that weirdly super intense way of his.  Usually he gets that look when he wants something.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

It doesn’t seem like it’s nothing but Kakarrot doesn’t really care to dwell on it.  The adrenaline from a show--the music, the cheers, the applause--is still thrumming through his veins and he bounces up and down on his feet.

“Let’s go, let’s go!”

“Nappa,” Raditz repeats and he bares his teeth a little.  It reminds Kakarrot when they were kids and he would act like he was a grown-up even though he’s only two years older than him.

Nappa’s easy to spot as he muscles his way through the crowd.  Out of all of them, Kakarrot’s known him for the shortest amount of time.  Turles had been his brother’s best friend forever even before they started dating and Broly was more often than not in the same class as him.  He met Vegeta in middle school when they were both in detention.  None of them met Nappa until after they started the band.  He could play alright but most of his appeal was the fact that he had nice amps--way nicer than anything any of them had.

He’s taller than all of them except maybe Broly but Nappa’s big, built like a professional wrestler or a bouncer.  Broly’s mostly lanky and he slouches so no one except maybe Vegeta feels short around him but, then again, he feels short around most people.  Kakarrot’s good about not bringing that up since he’s been punched in the kidneys for it before.

“You ready?”

He says it like a parent come to take them home from school.  Kakarrot thinks that that’s not really fair since he gets just as bad as they do when they go all out.  He’s not some responsible figure there to take care of them, even if the task  _ does _ end up falling to him.  He’s also good about not bringing  _ that _ up either.

Turles clicks his tongue ring against the back of his teeth and says, “Always.”

\--

It’s still weird being followed but Raditz spots several cars trailing behind Turles’s beat up van as they pull away from the bar.  He reckons it means they’re getting properly famous now, at least at the local level.  People don’t stop him on the street but sometimes at bars downtown, he’ll see one of their buttons decorating some kid’s denim jacket.

The entire thing still feels surreal.  He remembers smoking under the bleachers with Turles and seeing him get That Look.  It’s a wild, almost feral look that he adopts whenever he gets an idea.  He’d said, “Let’s drop out and form a band” and Raditz had said, “Fuck yeah.”  They didn’t or, at least, Raditz didn’t because neither of his parents finished high school and wanted more for him and his brother.  He can’t remember how all of them came together, just that they did.

Now they get texts from their  _ manager _ about gigs and how he’s trying to book them on this group tour all over the country with other bands on their  _ label. _  Sometimes it feels like just yesterday they were all trying to figure out how to stop playing at the same time.

Nappa always drives them even though the van is Turles’s.  Tonight, Raditz won the fight for shotgun so the others are stuck in the back with their instruments and gear.  Kakarrot drums his hands on the back of his seat with a nervous energy.  Other than his hands, he doesn’t see his brother, or anyone back there, except when the flood of a streetlight or traffic light momentarily lights them up.

He hears a click and a small, yellow-orange flicker appears in the darkness.  Raditz watches in the rearview mirror, weirdly transfixed.  This happens often, usually after shows, when he focuses intently on one, minor thing until someone snaps him out of it.  Now, he stares as Vegeta lights his cigarette and when the lighter flicks shut, he blinks his eyes until he’s back to reality.

“Where are we going?” Nappa asks.

It’s hard finding places for an after party when they play in town.  It feels like high school all over again if they go to someone’s house or rec room.

“Greenhouse,” Vegeta says, exhaling smoke.

It’s where they usually end up.  His family used to be rich but now his house is like one of those weird, crumbling old mansions from a Tennessee Williams play.  Raditz remembers the day he tagged along with his brother to hang out with his “new friend.”  His first thought when he saw his house was:  _ This shit is definitely haunted. _

There’s a greenhouse there, far enough from the house where his father and brother can’t hear them.  It’s quiet and smells wet and green.  The first time he’d gone in it, he remembers Vegeta saying, “My mom raised lilies.  As opposed to children.”  That was before Raditz knew how she died or how that’s partially why he’s the way that he is.

The greenhouse is mostly empty now except for some pots filled with dirt, a coil of hose, and a sea of cigarette butts and liquor bottles that have accumulated over the years.  It’s perfect for an after party even if once or twice someone has smashed one of the glass panels.

There are four cars total trailing after them as Nappa makes the turn onto the right street.  They park a good way away from the house, not wanting to be seen.  Vegeta doesn’t even live here anymore.  He stays in the apartment downtown along with him, Turles, and Broly.

Turles wraps an arm around his waist and he pushes him away.  He’s given away that right.

“Come on,” he says. “It’s been years.”

Raditz curls a lip.  He hates how Turles is so blasé about it, which is probably why he still nurses the grudge over it.  He’s always so dismissive about it, like sleeping with Kakarrot is nothing and didn’t completely destroy the fibre of their relationship.

“Let him be, Turles,” Broly says quietly and he smiles at him.

He smiles back, a bit stilted, and then looks away.  It’s too dark to tell but he might be blushing.

\--

Kakarrot knows he’s fucked.  He doesn’t go that far normally with his thinking or speaking but “fucked” is the only way to put it.  He’d been cruising on something someone had given him to smoke and whatever concoction Turles had mixed from the bottles that gathered dust in the back of the greenhouse.  The adrenaline still pumped in his veins and his whole body was thrumming.  He felt at one with the world, like he was in tune with everything.  Someone was playing “The End” on a portable stereo and he felt the jangled keyboard notes deep, deep within him.

Then there was a hand on his back and he turned to see Vegeta making his “I Want” face at him but it’s softened by how drunk he clearly is.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

He hadn’t known what he meant and was about to say something when everything clicked together and he yelled, “Chi-Chi!”

Now he knows he’s fucked and she’s probably going to break up with him again.  Chi-Chi and him have been breaking up and getting back together since they were juniors in high school.  One day he thinks she’s gonna wise up and dump him for good.  He tries to do better, to show her how he feels, but he always finds a way to fuck it up.

The apartment is quiet and dark when he lets himself in and he wonders if she’s gone to bed.  Kakarrot moves through the dark, careful not to make a sound.  Even if Chi-Chi’s not asleep, he knows that someone in the house  _ is. _

The light in the kitchen comes on and he freezes.  He feels like a kid caught coming in after curfew.  Chi-Chi’s in her pajamas, the ones he got her for one of their anniversaries last year.  They’re printed with little cats and they all seem to be glaring at him judgmentally.

Sheepish, he rubs the back of his neck and flashes what he hopes is a charming smile at her.  It doesn’t help that his mind is floating somewhere well above his head and everything feels disconnected and shaky.

“You said you were coming back after the show,” she says simply. “We waited up for you.”

He looks around, but she’s alone.

“I put him to bed.  It’s 3am.”

“It is?”

Oh, oh--he is fucked.

“I’m sorry, Chi-Chi.  Y’know how it is.”

She sighs and sags and walks to him.  Kakarrot holds his arms out and she leans into the embrace.

“I’ll do better.”

“Promises, promises.”

It’s probably the late hour that makes it easier than it usually is.  Chi-Chi’s clearly tired and will probably save her vitriol for the next morning.

“I’m going to bed,” she tells him as she pulls away. “Join me after you kiss him goodnight and  _ do not  _ wake him up.”

She doesn’t kiss him before she goes into the bedroom, but that’s part of his punishment.  At the open doorway, she turns back to him.

“And you smell.”

He’s sweaty and he can smell the smoke seeped into his hair--she has a point.  No use in it now, though.  That’s a problem for tomorrow morning.

Kakarrot goes into the bedroom next to theirs and creeps in.  Gohan’s asleep in his bed, his stuffed dragon tucked under his chin.  He leans down and kisses his cheek.

As quiet as he can, he leaves his room.  Sometimes he still can’t believe he’s a father, that he got Chi-Chi pregnant almost immediately after high school.  He regrets being impulsive but he doesn’t regret Gohan, not for a second.

He drags himself back to their room and strips down.  He figures Chi-Chi’s already dropped off asleep but when he gets under the sheets, she curls into him.  It has to be despite herself since he smells like booze and soil and weed and because she’s mad at him but he takes what he can get and holds her back.

\--

The deli on the corner is inexplicably open for twenty-four hours, which is a very good thing and a very bad thing all at the same time.  The good thing is that he can go in at four in the morning when his roommates are asleep and the party’s over and get cheap, shitty black coffee.  The bad thing is that he can go in at four in the morning and get cheap, shitty black coffee.

Vegeta knows he shouldn’t have suggested the greenhouse but he does it anyway.  He hates going back home and never would if not for his brother.  His hand tightens around the styrofoam cup and he has to let go before the entire thing collapses and sludgy black coffee is all over the table and in his lap.  There’s no one but him and the bored cashier who probably hates this shift.  Definitely hates this shift.  Vegeta used to work nights at the bodega a few streets over and he knows how miserable it can get.

He isn’t helping matters, being in here and chugging coffee at such an ungodly hour.  This one sort of knows him, though, which is a troubling thought in and of itself.  “You’re the one in that band, right?” which is about as famous as he sees any of them getting ever, considering he doesn’t even know the band’s  _ name. _  It was followed by, “You come in here a lot,” which is worse to hear than “that band.”  No one likes being reminded that they frequent a place enough times for the staff to recognize them.

The door to the deli bangs open and he glares at the intruder.  Can’t they see he’s clearly brooding?

“What year is it?”

The girl’s voice is loud and it cuts through the combination of chemicals and alcohol going through his body.  Vegeta cringes, but she doesn’t notice him.  The cashier stares at her, at a loss for words himself.

“What year is it?” she sounds adamant, like she’s going to keep asking until someone answers her.

So he does.  She turns and stares at him head on.  Blue-green hair is wild around her head, barely pushed back by an elastic headband.

“Well, shit,” she says. “The time machine didn’t work.”

“You’re building a time machine?”

She slides in across from him like they’re old friends and props her chin up in her hands.

“Totally,” she says. “I just need to find a way to channel 1.21 gigawatts into the flux capacitor.”

“Try lightning,” he says back. “Wait for it to strike the clock tower.”

He hasn’t asked for company but her voice is less annoying now and she’s right there, smiling but clearly just as tired as he is.

“Good call.” She pauses. “I’m not actually building a time machine.  I’ve just been working on my thesis for so long, time has no meaning.”

He turns his hand out. “You had me for a minute there.”

“Did I?”

“No.”

The conversation is enough to get his brain sluggishly working.  He can never sleep on nights after shows.  Usually, he just drinks until he passes out but tonight Nappa took the bottle away from him like the glorified chaperone he is.  So here he is sitting in a deli at 4:13am with a bored cashier and a girl with blue hair who’s paraphrasing  _ Back to the Future _ at him.

She takes his coffee cup and drinks from it.  Immediately, she makes a face.

“That’s gross.”

“It’s mine, though.” Feeling like a child, he inches it away from her.

She laughs and it’s a nice laugh.

“I guess.  I’m Bulma.”

He accepts her name with a nod.  It’s not like he came in here expecting conversation.  He was hoping to just let his body run out of energy so when he trudges back into the apartment, eventual exhaustion and fatigue just lets him collapse.

“You know, usually when someone tells you their name, you tell them yours.”

He curls a lip and it makes her pout petulantly.  For someone supposedly working on a  _ thesis, _ she’s pretty immature.

“Come on.”

She prods at his arm and he pulls it away.  This girl--no, Bulma--is fairly persistent.  He sighs.

“What are the odds of you leaving me alone if you don’t get your way?”

She pretends to think about it. “Hmm...slim to none.  Come on, cutie.”

_ Cutie? _  He scoffs but relents.

“Vegeta.” When she laughs, he says, “It’s better than Bulma.”

Her laugh cuts off and she’s angry again--oops.

“Hey, it’s a family name!”

“Well, so is mine!”

She takes another sip of his coffee and, for some reason, he lets her.

“What’s your last name?”

He wonders why she wants to know but if she has been working on her thesis for so long, he’s probably the first human she’s been in contact with.  Sucks for her, he figures.

“Prince.”

“See, that’s nice.  Prince.” She smiles. “Thanks for the coffee, your highness.”

As quickly as she blew into the deli, she’s gone and his styrofoam cup full of nasty sludge leaves with her.  He stares at the door for a moment, wondering if the conversation happened or if his cross-faded exhaustion has caused hallucinations again.  After a moment that’s too late for her to hear, he speaks.

“You’re welcome.”


	2. Battle of the Hopeless Crushes

The coffee shop isn’t terribly crowded considering there isn’t that high a demand for coffee at two in the afternoon.  There’s a few scattered people sitting on their laptops, but no one pays anyone any mind.  Raditz thinks rock’n’roll history could be being made around them and no one’s even looking.

They’re all crowded around a round table with their coffee and their manager.  None of them know his actual name but it doesn’t really matter.  King Kai has been good to them, even when they exasperate him.

“What’d we do, dad?” Turles asks.

He tips his coffee to his lips and raises one, pierced eyebrow.  Raditz looks at the way it catches the light and remembers how he was there when he got it.  When one of their friends from high school had pulled Turles into the bathroom at a party and done it.  How that same friend had pierced Raditz’s nose but it’d gotten infected and he’d had to take it out.

“Well, your little party the other night got the cops called on you.”

“As a threat.” Turles rolls his eyes. “Vegeta’s dad’s a prick.”

King Kai sighs and adjusts the small, round, dark glasses he always wears.  Raditz sometimes wonders if he regrets signing them.  The label is small, only with a handful of bands on it, and he thinks if it wasn’t for the fact that they were easily the most popular group on it (so he says), they’d be out on their asses.

“Regardless, I had to do damage control after you smashed three flower pots and four glass panels, not to mention whoever urinated on the floor.”

“It’s fine.” Vegeta taps out a cigarette and pats at his jacket pockets for a lighter. “My dad just whined to me over Facebook.  It’s not like he’s pressing charges.”

King Kai points at the no smoking sign behind the counter and Vegeta reluctantly shoves the pack back into his pocket.

“What are we here for?” Broly asks quietly.

“Yeah, are you here to ground us?” Turles ends his sentence with a snicker.

He sighs wearily and takes his glasses off to rub at his eyes with a thumb and forefinger.

“No.  I’m here to  _ tell you _ that the tour is going to be happening.” He readjusts his glasses, the lenses catching the light as he does.

“That group thing?” Raditz asks.

King Kai nods.

“Yes.  We’ve worked it out.  Four bands, twenty cities, one to two shows a city.”

Kakarrot lets out a low whistle. “That’s more than we’ve ever done.”

“Gonna put a lot of mileage on the van,” Turles says, nodding slowly. “‘Less you got us transportation.”

“Turles, did you see the look I gave you when they charged you extra for soy milk?  Do I look like we can afford transportation.”

“Well, that’s discrimination.  My ass can’t have dairy and they’re out there charging me ninety extra cents for it!”

Vegeta rolls his eyes.

“Why don’t you drink it black?”

“Because I love myself, asshat.”

“Wow, what’s that like?”

Raditz gestures towards their manager, trying to get everyone back on task.

“Who are the other bands?” Kakarrot asks.

He shoots his brother a grateful look.  King Kai clears his throat and places both hands palms down on the table.

“It’ll be you, Kame Kami, U6, and those synth twins.”

Raditz nods.  He’s heard of them before.  Kame Kami is from the next city over and he’s pretty sure he’s partied with their lead singer before.

“When’ll it be?”

“A few months more.  We have to put everything together.  ‘Til then, the Monkey’s Paw has agreed to continue to let you play three times a week.  I already worked it out with Shugesh and--Vegeta, oh my God, if you need something in your mouth, take this!”

Raditz turns to see that he had put a cigarette back in his mouth.  King Kai fishes around in his briefcase before producing a Tootsie Pop.

“Why do you have that?” Broly asks in that quiet, mostly flat voice of his.

“For situations just like this, believe it or not.”

He nearly laughs as he watches Vegeta sullenly stick the cherry-flavored lollipop into his mouth.  King Kai draws in a deep breath.

“I’ll let you know when I have all the details and an official date.  Have a good show tonight and don’t get arrested.”

“We make no promises,” Turles says.

“About the show or the potential police reports?”

He pretends to consider it before saying, “Both.”

\--

“You still in the doghouse?”

Kakarrot shrugs.  He knows it’s not a good enough answer for his brother but he doesn’t want to talk about how Chi-Chi’s still mad at him with Gohan right here.  It’s been a week, which makes it one of Chi-Chi’s longer grudges.  He can’t blame her.  He’s never on time, he always forgets to tell her things and leaves her waiting...honestly, sometimes he thinks she’d kiss him off for good if it wasn’t for Gohan.  He hopes it isn’t the case.  He isn’t sure of much when it comes to relationships but he knows he loves her.  He loves the little family they’ve made and he wishes he could find a way to stop himself from constantly fucking it up.

“We don’t have a dog,” Gohan informs him. “Our apartment doesn’t let us have pets.”

Raditz exaggeratedly smacks the side of his head. “Dang, you’re right.”

Gohan giggles and leans against Kakarrot’s side as they approach the trailer.  He reckons that it’s not very punk rock that they go to their parents’ house every week for dinner but he also doesn’t really care.  His parents have always been there for him and his brother.  When he told them he had gotten Chi-Chi pregnant, they had understood and said they’d help in any way.  Granted, both he and Raditz had been born before his parents turned eighteen so it wasn’t really their place to pass judgment.

Tonight, Chi-Chi’s on the late shift at the twenty-four hour restaurant where she works and they have a gig so even if they weren’t eating dinner, he’d have to drop Gohan off.

“You ready for tonight?”

They’re playing new material.  Vegeta had written two new songs because he apparently doesn’t sleep anymore and they hadn’t gotten to rehearse them terribly much yet.  Kakarrot is a little worried.  Usually they practice for hours, making their music weave in and out until the sound of their guitars are indistinguishable from one another.  He’s been manic lately, though, so he hasn’t bugged him.  He’s known Vegeta since seventh grade and he knows not to get in his way when he gets like this.

“As I can be.”

“You’ll do great, daddy!”

He looks down at Gohan’s smiling face and gives him a thumbs up with his free hand.  Considering he plays at bars or underground clubs, Gohan’s never seen him perform.  Every now and then, he’ll play at home, though, and the four-year-old will smack his hands on the table in a semblance of drumming.

Raditz rings the doorbell and calls out, “We don’t have our keys!”

The door opens and their mom stands behind the still shut storm door, hands on her hips and a wry smile playing on her lips.

“Why did we bother to give you boys keys if you never bring them?”

Raditz sighs. “Mom, I live with three dudes.  I can never find anything.”

Kakarrot tries to think of his own excuse.

“Kids move things.”

Gohan gives him a betrayed look.

“Daddy, I put your keys by the door so you can find them.”

He swears that Gohan is already smarter than him--he has to get it from Chi-Chi.  His mom opens the screen door and holds her arms out.  Gohan rushes forward and jumps into them.

“How’s my little dumpling?” she asks.

“I’m good!”

She steps aside to allow him and Raditz in the trailer.  Sometimes when he comes home, it feels weird.  He feels too tall for the double wide where he and his brother spent their childhood.  Other times, it still feels like putting on a glove or stepping into a pair of perfectly worn jeans and it’s all he can do to stop himself from moving back in.

His dad is on the couch, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips.

“Grandpa!”

He takes the cigarette from his mouth and grins broadly. “Gohan!”

“You act like you didn’t  _ just _ see him three days ago,” Raditz says.

Their dad rises from the couch and walks over to tug on a strand of his long, wild hair.

“Hello to you, too, Radi.”

He bats him away, but he’s smiling.  Sometimes Kakarrot feels a bit guilty when he looks at his relationship with his parents compared to his friends’.  Their situation is unorthodox--his dad was abandoned at a bus stop when he was three, adopted by an old man who noticed him all alone, and then became a parent first at age fifteen and then age seventeen--but never did he doubt his parents loved him or that they were in his corner.  He looks at Turles’s situation with his mom, Broly’s issues with his dad, and the entire weird tragedy that was Vegeta’s childhood and he can see that he’s lucky.

“Are you at Shugesh’s?” their dad asks.

Raditz nods.

“Yeah, ‘til we leave--whenever that is.  It’s cool, like we’re artists in residence or something.”

Their mom snorts a laugh.

“Sure you are.”

\--

After the show, Shugesh tells them to say.

“You get the young crowd in here,” he says.

It’s true enough.  The usual crowd is a bunch of middle-aged men drinking beer and yelling about politics or playing pool.  Vegeta doesn’t care either way.  Shugesh doesn’t care what they trash or how big a mess they make.  He’s basically like a surrogate uncle to Kakarrot and Raditz anyway.  He also doesn’t want to go back to the greenhouse so soon.  His dad will get over it but it’ll take more than just a week.  He doesn’t want to deal.

What he  _ does _ want to do is get completely wasted.  At this bar, that’s nearly impossible unless he wants to stick his mouth under one of the beer taps.

“You should head home,” Raditz tells him.

“You should fuck off.”

It’s not his best material but over the past three days, he’s probably gotten a grand total of four hours of sleep.

“Seriously, you look like shit.”

“And I’m going to  _ seriously _ stick my foot so far up your ass, you’re gonna spit out my shoe.”

Turles appears between them and drapes his arms over both of their shoulders.

“Kinky.”

He gets an impulse to bite his fingers and maybe Raditz is right, he  _ should _ go home and attempt to sleep.  Broly, from where he sits sullenly at the bar, watches all of this silently.  It’s only the four of them.  Nappa took off because he has some job or something the next day for--something.  He told them but Vegeta hadn’t been listening.  His ears still rang from the show, his own voice pounding against his head as he came back to reality.  As for Kakarrot, Chi-Chi had shown up, having been allowed to leave work early.  She’d said something about being tired of being mad at him and they’d gone back to their place.

He shoves Turles’s arm off and turns away.  Something catches his eye at the bar and he almost misses it.  Without a word to the others, he walks over.

Bulma looks different than she did in the deli.  Her hair is straight, falling past her shoulders, all smooth and shiny.  She’s wearing makeup and a dark dress and he honestly can’t believe she’s here.  He has no idea why he came over.  It’s been over a week so what’s he going to say?  “Hey, remember the time we talked about time travel and made fun of each other’s names at an all night deli?”  He isn’t even sure why he’s seeking her out tonight other than the fact that he’s curious as to why she’s here.

“Your highness!” she says when she sees him, mouth splitting into a grin. “You were good up there.”

“Why are you here?”

It’s not his best material but he knows he’s never been one for witty repartee, even when he isn’t exhausted beyond all reason.  Bulma smirks and tips her bottle of beer to her lips.  Once she swallows, she speaks.

“I’m trying to reenter the land of the living after thesis hell and someone told me about this local band.  Tickets were only fifteen bucks so I thought why not.” She smirks a bit and adds, “Who knew my late night coffee buddy was the lead singer?”

He doesn’t bother to correct her that he isn’t the lead singer.  He and Kakarrot trade off but tonight, he sang most of the songs.

“Ooh, Veggie, who’s your friend?”

Turles’s chin digs into his shoulder and part of him wants to backhand him off.

“Bulma.” She says it for him, crossing her legs where she sits on the stool.

He sticks his hand out. “Turles.”

They shake and he feels like when he was younger and he’d bring friends home to his dad’s scrutiny.  When he first brought Kakarrot over for dinner, he had introduced him and his father had merely told Kakarrot to get out of his chair.  This situation is the same but simultaneously nothing like it.  Or not.  He doesn’t want to admit Raditz is right about him needing sleep even in his own mind so he shakes his head and glares at the two of them.

“We’ve met once.”

“And now we’re best friends,” Bulma says, voice teasing.

He intensifies his glare at her but she flashes a broad grin and he finds himself unable to stay mad.  She sets her beer bottle down and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.  He sees some lipstick has come off on the back of her hand and, for some reason, he focuses on it.

“Hey, wanna go somewhere that doesn’t serve piss water?”

“Sure,” Turles replies.

Playfully, she bats at his chest. “Not you.”

The move isn’t inherently flirtatious and he has zero reason to be but Vegeta finds himself feeling jealous.  He doesn’t like the feeling, especially about someone he’s just met and Turles of all people.  Then again, he very rarely makes friends or even talks to people outside of the band.  Even if he meets someone first, they end up gravitating towards the charming Turles or the friendly Raditz.

Bulma’s looking at him directly and the dim lights of the bar reflect off of the whites of her eyes.  Her lips are slightly parted and lipstick is smeared just a little.

“How about it, your highness?”

She’s addressing him and he blinks for a moment, trying to get back to reality.

“Where is that?”

He has no cash for anything top shelf or even a bottle of Skol from a liquor store.  And he’d rather chug nail polish remover than drink that.

“My place.”

There’s a weightiness to the statement but he finds himself not caring.  If it’s a come on, it’s a come on.  If it’s not, well, it gets him wasted.

“Sure.”

Smiling, Bulma takes his hand and leads him out of the bar.

\--

Chi-Chi presses against him the moment the door closes behind them.  He hadn’t expected to see her after the show.  She doesn’t like the music they play and, besides, she had work.  She said she’d gotten let off early.  Said she was tired of being mad at him.  There was a weariness, a resignation in her voice but it’s for another time.  This time, he just put his arms around her and told her he’d do better, he’d  _ be _ better.

Gohan, of course, is still at the trailer, fast asleep in Kakarrot’s old bedroom, so it’s just them in the apartment.  Chi-Chi kisses him once, perfunctory, and he knows that this is her forgiveness.  Every time she gets over being mad, she gives him a single, close-mouthed kiss before anything else.

“I caught the second half of your show,” she says, pulling away. “You’re sounding better.”

That’s high praise from Chi-Chi.  She doesn’t like what they play, but it could be because she had had to sit and listen to them practice again and again when they first started in the garage.

“Yeah?”

She nods.

“I like the new stuff.”

It’s not even what he sings but he’ll take it.  He pouts his lips a little, unspoken permission for another kiss.  She nods and he presses his lips to hers.  Chi-Chi’s hands go into his hair, tugging at it slightly as she slides her fingers between the strands.  He lets out a soft grunt into her mouth and wraps his arms around her waist.

Chi-Chi pulls back again and her hands slide down to his face.  He turns his head just enough to kiss the pad of her thumb as she strokes his lower lip.

“You should write about us,” she says.

“Who?”

“Us.  Me and you.”

He isn’t sure what she means so he just kisses her again.  She pulls back again, agonizingly, and he wonders if he’s still being punished.  This time, though, she just places the tips of her fingers on his chest and starts pushing him backwards towards the bedroom.

Clothes are quickly discarded.  They both know how this goes by now.  He still remembers the first time they were together, losing it to each other on the couch in Chi-Chi’s wood-paneled basement.  The way she straddled him, nervous and half-dressed, her hair hanging in her eyes.

She kisses down his chest and he lays her down on the mattress.  All of her is pressed against him and, combined with the post-show adrenaline, it’s almost too much.  Chi-Chi swings one arm out and gestures to the night table.

“Put one on,” she instructs him. “I’m not in the mood to give Gohan a younger sibling yet.”

That day he still remembers, too, when Chi-Chi showed up at the trailer, red and raw like she’d been clawing at her face.  She was wrapped up in one of his old hooded sweatshirts with tears in her eyes.  His mother had taken one look at her and just...knew.

He nods and crawls off of her to fetch the condom.  He puts one hand down to brace himself and Chi-Chi cries out.  Kakarrot looks down to see that his hand was directly on her chest.

“Oh--sorry, sorry!”

He retracts his hand and kisses the soft swell of her breast where he had been pushing.  Sheepishly, he grabs the box of condoms and manages to get one on with minimal fumbling.

“You’re lucky you’re cute,” she tells him.

“No, I’m lucky you’re forgiving.”

At that, Chi-Chi smiles and pulls him in for another kiss.

\--

Turles knows Broly’s staring at his crotch but he also knows that it’s in a way that isn’t remotely pervy.  Broly is just Broly, pure as the driven snow.  Untouched in all the years he’s known him.  He doesn’t know why but he knows better than to ask.  Everyone has something and even though he only has a vague idea of what goes on in Broly’s life, it’s enough to know not to tease or pry.  Out of everyone, Broly is still a bit of an enigma to him.  He’s a genius at whatever instrument he picks up but he’s so, so quiet.

“Did it hurt?” he asks.

“Like a thousand sons of bitches,” Turles replies.

All of them sport their fair share of piercings.  Broly has both of his ears and Raditz finally got his nose redone after the fiasco back in high school.  Kakarrot has one ear done and Vegeta has both of his nipples pierced.  Turles, though, outranks them all.  His most recent piercing was several months ago when he had finally taken the plunge and gotten his dick pierced.

“I want another one,” Broly says.

“You want…?” He arches a brow and gestures to his crotch.

He shakes his head. “No.  That one.”

He points to Turles’s bridge piercing.  With him sitting down, they’re almost the same height so Turles leans forward and cups Broly’s chin in his hand.

“I know a guy that can do it for you.”

“I want it done at a real place,” he says.

Turles scoffs.

“That’s not very punk rock.”

“There’s nothing punk rock about staph infections.”

Broly says it in his usual, mumbling, almost monotone voice but he says it so resolutely that Turles lets go of his face and bursts into laughter.

“What’s up?”

Raditz is back, holding a beer, and Turles bites his lip.  It’s been years but he still regrets fucking it up with him.  If he had known that Raditz would have ended it for good, he never would have slept with his little brother.  He had just seen Kakarrot all grown up and...they hadn’t been able to help themselves.  He was broken up with Chi-Chi and he was broken up with Raditz and it had made sense  _ at the time. _  If he had known that he would never get back together with him, he might have rethought his actions, which is something he really, really hates to do.

“Broly wants his nose pierced.”

Raditz flicks the two hoops that pierce his own nostril and nods.

“Fun stuff.”

They stand in silence for a moment and Turles has to break it.  He can’t stand lulls in conversation.

“King Kai’ll be happy.  Odds are good we aren’t going to cause any property damage tonight.”

Broly shrugs. “There’s always arson.”

He punches him lightly on the arm.

“That’s what I like about you, Broles.  Always looking on the bright side.”

His lips curve up into a slight smile before reverting back to his neutral face of slight concern.  Raditz, meanwhile, rolls his eyes and takes a sip of beer.

“Aw, what’s wrong, Radi?”

“Nothing.”

It’s obviously not.  He sets his beer down.  They’ve moved from the bar to a table near the back.  Every now and then, some kid comes up and says they enjoyed the show but the crowd’s thinning out.  Soon, Shugesh’ll throw them out so he can close up.

“So, our little Veggie’s out there getting laid,” Turles says.

Raditz scrunches his face up in disdain and Broly doesn’t say anything.  He pushes on.

“Honestly, he’s so fucking exhausted he’ll probably pass out asleep on top of her.” He laughs. “But he’s always in a better mood afterwards.  That’s why he’s been so insufferable the past few months.”

Raditz takes a sip of his beer and says, “How can you tell there’s a difference?”

Broly gives a small laugh and flashes this look at Raditz and--oh.  Turles feels a mischievous smile curl onto his own face.  So it’s like that.  He tucks that information away for later.

“‘Cause I was the last one to fuck him.”

He says it mostly to see the look on Raditz’s face and it does not disappoint.  Broly catches it, too, and stares down at his hands.

“Seriously?”

He shrugs. “We were bored and my piercing had just healed so I wanted to test it out.  Why?  You jealous?”

Raditz meets his gaze and says, “Of him or you?”

_ Touché… _

Instead of continuing the conversation, he tosses him the keys to the van.

“Let’s just head home.  We’ll be good boys tonight.”

Raditz catches them in one hand and he stares at him for a long moment.  Turles thinks he’s going to start something or at least say something but in the end, he just turns and leaves to get the van.  Broly goes to follow him but Turles puts a hand on his arm to stop him.

“He has no idea, does he?”

He looks bewildered for a minute.

“Who?”

“Raditz.  He has no clue you like him.”

Broly glances down at his feet and bites his lip.

“Please don’t tell him.”

Turles mimes zipping his mouth shut and then locking it.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

\--

Bulma’s apartment is a mess.  There’s post-it notes all over the walls and books and clothes everywhere.  The sink is piled high with dirty dishes and pots and pans.

“I’d like to say that it’s because I’ve been working but it’s almost always like this.”

She says this without an ounce of shame.  It’s not like Vegeta can really judge.  Their apartment is just as bad, if not worse.  Then again, they’re four people and Bulma seems to have managed to do this on her own.

“You live alone?”

She nods.

“My parents pay for the place, though, while I’m in school.”

Bulma busies herself getting liquor bottles from the pantry and sets them down on the counter.

“What do you want?”

She’s turned on the kitchen light and harsh, yellow-white light spotlights each choice.  He grabs an already open bottle of jameson and twists the cap off.

“Oh, right, you’re in a band.” Bulma laughs. “Calm it down, Keith Richards.”

He gives her the finger, which makes her laugh even harder.  He manages to take one sip before she’s there, pulling the bottle away.

“What?”

Bulma replaces it with her lips and he can taste the beer she drank before and it’s mingling with the jameson in a way that isn’t all that pleasant.  She puts the bottle back on the counter and slides her hands up the back of the t-shirt he’s wearing.

“I’m starting to get the suspicion that you didn’t invite me over to drink.”

“And here I thought  _ I _ was the genius.”

She kisses him again and he hadn’t realized it’d been so long since he’s been kissed, or even touched.  His nerve endings feel alight as her hands gently stroke the small of his back.

“Take it off,” she murmurs, tugging at his shirt.

Bulma wastes no time and he’s kind of glad.  He steps back and pulls his shirt over his head.  When he does, she stares.

“What?”

“A couple things.  One, you’re really well-built for someone so short--”

Despite the situation, irritation flares in his chest.

“Okay, we are like the  _ same _ height--”

“And, secondly, those.” She points at his chest.

Vegeta looks down and--oh, right.

“I forgot about them.”

Bulma widens her eyes.

“How do you forget that you have your nipples pierced?”

He shrugs.

“They’re more trouble than they’re worth.  They took forever to heal and I had to lie down and put shot glasses full of rubbing alcohol on them.”

She laughs but then her expression changes and she draws close again.

“More trouble than they’re worth, huh?”

She moves in as if to kiss him but then lowers her head.  She takes one of the rings through her teeth and pulls gently, making him gasp.  He arches his back into her and Bulma grabs him by the hips.

“We’re in this now,” she tells him, lifting her head so they’re looking each other in the eye again. “You told me about your nipple shot glasses--there’s no going back.”

He snorts a laugh, unable to help himself.

They somehow find a way through the mess to get to her bedroom.  More post-it notes cover the wall in a vague semblance of order that he’s sure has something to do with her thesis.  Textbooks and notebooks litter the floor and he nearly crushes the spiral spine of one as Bulma maneuvers him to the bed.

“What’s this on your back?” she asks when they’re wearing far fewer clothes.

“It’s from where they cut off my tail,” he tells her very seriously.

“Really?” She sounds skeptical.

“No.  It’s a fucking birthmark.”

After that, though, there’s not much else to say.  They’re on top of her sheets and he’s on top of her and the only sound is their increasingly loud breathing.  She has her face buried in his shoulder and he can catch a whiff of her fruity shampoo--it smells like processed strawberries but for some reason he doesn’t mind it--and it’s.  It’s been too long.  Fooling around with Turles a few months ago out of horny boredom and when was even the time before that?

After he comes, Bulma whispers, “Thanks, your highness” into his ear.

“Are you staying?”

He should leave.  This is the second time they’ve met and they’ve already slept together so--what is she to him?  Or him to her?  He crawls out from the bed but the world tilts and he has to sit back down.  Bulma crawls up and strokes his shoulders.

“You need to sleep,” she tells him and he wants to snarl at her to back off. “Sleep with me.”

He’s more tired now, and spent, so it sounds like the best thing in the world.  She scoots over and lets him crawl under the blankets.  The last thing he feels before his exhaustion catches up to him and he falls into the void of sleep, is Bulma’s back pressed against his chest.


	3. Raising the Roof in a Calamity Way

“Fuck me, I’m famous!”

Turles sticks his head out of the passenger window of the van and screams at passersby.  The city is a lit blur as Nappa presses hard on the gas, motoring through the streets.  There isn’t much traffic at this time at night and every now and then there’s periods of darkness from closed or broken storefronts.  A Placebo cassette is in the old tape deck and Brian Molko’s voice echoes through the whole van.

Raditz leans in from the back to hook a finger into his belt loops and tugs him back.  Turles thrusts his head up and lets out a loud howl.

It’s hard to keep a hold on him since he’s three shots in already but tonight they have a reason to celebrate.  Tonight the entire bar was packed to come and hear  _ them _ and in another two months, they’re going on that tour.  He feels on the precipice of something.  All of them are on the edge of the cliff, ready to jump into real fame.  They’ve been playing together for  _ years, _ so he reckons they’ve earned it.

Turles pulls himself back in and bounces back and forth against his seat.  Nappa rolls his eyes and guns it on a turn.  All their gear and everyone sitting in the back swings over.  Raditz crashes into Broly.

“Sorry, man.” He tips his head to the side. “It looks good, by the way.”

He taps the bridge of his nose and Broly bites his lip and looks away.  He covers his new piercing with one hand.

“Thanks,” he mumbles.

Raditz crawls off of him and grabs for the bottle of JD.  Kakarrot’s hand is on it, too, and he has to wrestle his brother for it.  He always wins this fight.  He’s bigger and taller and Kakarrot’s even more far gone than he is.  Bulma giggles from her spot on Vegeta’s lap.  Ever since she took him home a couple months ago, the two of them have been inseparable.  It’s starting to show in their output.  The songs he’s been working on lately almost sound optimistic.

She tilts her head and captures his lips with hers.  Bulma turns so she’s straddling him and they make out like teenagers against one of their amps.  Raditz rolls his eyes.  Part of him wants to be happy for their (co) frontman but mostly he just thinks it’s gross.

He manages to pry the bottle from Kakarrot’s fingers and unscrews the cap.  He tips some into his mouth, cringing as it burns down his throat.

Kakarrot watches him and then, in the flash of a streetlight, he sees an odd sort of smile flicker onto his face.  Without warning, he puts his hand on the bottom of the bottle and tips it back.  Raditz gags but manages to redirect the booze into the right hole.  The whiskey burns all the way down and he flexes his hand around the neck of the bottle to try and get it away from his mouth.

“Asshole,” he growls when he finally manages to uncork it from his mouth.  He feels queasy and hot all over.

“Oops.”

Kakarrot tries to look innocent but he can’t stop grinning and sometimes he really hates his little brother.

“Chi-Chi’s gonna be pissed when you come home all fucked up,” he says.

It’s a cheap tactic to piss him off but it works.  The grin falls from his face.  He doesn’t stop vibrating, though, but that’s as usual.  Kakarrot can very rarely stop moving.  He’s always messing with something or shifting.  After shows, it’s more pronounced.  He gets more hyped than any of them onstage.

Raditz turns to look at Broly, who’s sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest.  He has a box of Franzia next to him that he takes occasional sips from.  He nevers goes as hard as them.  Once Raditz asked him about it and he said that he was afraid of losing control, of losing himself.

Behind him, he hears Bulma let out a moan and he knows that their making out is turning into more.  He’s glad, really--totally.  Vegeta’s been in a better mood lately and Bulma’s pretty cool but, honestly, it’s more than he can take.

“Enough.”

He swipes at him but misses and just teeters over.  From the passenger seat, Turles bursts into raucous, hyena laughter.  Nappa floors it through a yellow light and they all fly back again.  A car trying to go right on red honks on them and Turles waves his middle finger out the window.

“Fuck you!  We’re gonna be famous!”

Carried barely over the wind flying through the open windows, he can hear the driver shout, “No one cares!”

\--

Bulma sprawls out on her bed and rearranges another group of post-it notes.  She glances down at the boringly thick textbook on her bed and sighs.  She’s going to work herself to death over this, she knows.  Maybe everyone telling her she was a gifted genius as a child  _ might have _ put some pressure on her to succeed.

She gives up for now and rolls onto her side.  Instead, she glances down at the weird scribbles and incomprehensible writing in Vegeta’s notebook.  He’s writing music or something, which is weird-looking on simple, lined paper but he seems to know what he’s doing.

“I’m so glad you’re inspired by your beautiful muse.”

She stretches languidly, stretching her arms over her head, but he ignores her.  Bulma sighs.  She was joking anyway--mostly.  In the past five months they’ve been sleeping together and sort of dating, she’s begun to get used to his mood swings.  She reaches out and tugs on his hair.

“Hey, who was that model chick who dated, like, half of the Rolling Stones?”

He looks up from his scraps of paper and says, “Anita Pallenberg?”

Bulma nods. “Yeah, her.  I liked that one song written about her: ‘You Got the Silver.’  I always wanted someone to sing it to me.”

She doesn’t mean it as a hint but Vegeta’s lip curls as if she’s making a request of him.  God, most of the time she has no idea what goes on in that busy head of his.  He tosses his pencil down and mutters something about “needing Kakarrot” and scowls at himself.  He drops his head back from where he’s sitting, back against the side of her mattress, and she takes to running her fingers through his thick hair.

“Would you sing it for me?” she asks, teasing.

“No.”

“You dick!”

He grins wolfishly and she responds by tugging on his hair again.

“So what  _ are _ you doing?”

“Reworking one of our old songs from years ago,” he replies. “It’s garbage now.  But I need Kakarrot or at least my guitar.”

She strokes his forehead and, despite himself, he closes his eyes and lets her.

“Will you sing  _ that _ for me?”

“No.”

Now she’s frustrated.

“Why not?”

Vegeta opens his eyes. “Because it’s a breakup song.  Raditz wrote it when he found out his boyfriend fucked his brother.”

“Oh.”

She traces the outline of his face with one finger.  His high cheekbones and the stubborn point of his chin.  He would probably hate it if she called him cute again.

“Sing me something,” she says instead.

“No.  I’m actually a shitty singer.  I’m just good at growling out the word ‘fuck’ under loads of guitar feedback.”

She doesn’t believe that.  Bulma’s heard him singing in the shower when he thinks she’s asleep and his voice is nice.  Rough and raspy but nice, like liquor being poured over ice cubes.  She wonders if he even realizes it but it can’t be.  Vegeta always seems one hundred percent aware of his own talents.

“What do you want, then?” she asks and tugs on his hair a bit impatiently.

“A cigarette.”

Bulma sighs and nods--she could use one, too.  Even so, she doesn’t go for the pack on her nightstand, and just strokes his forehead.  So much of him is caged up and it’s intriguing but also annoying.

_ One day, you’re going to tell me your secrets, asshole. _

\--

Raditz shifts himself as gently as he can to avoid his ass going numb without disturbing Gohan.  He’s sitting cross-legged, with his nephew in his lap, listening to him read from his picture books.  He’s taught himself, apparently, and Chi-Chi is over the moon about it.

“He’s only four!” she’d told him when he’d arrived as if he didn’t know his own nephew’s age.

He reads each word slowly, sounding some of the more difficult, multi-syllabic ones out, but he’s still reading them.

“Nice one, little dude.”

Gohan beams.  It isn’t often that Raditz gets to babysit him.  Usually he’s brought over to Chi-Chi’s dad’s place or to the trailer, but Kakarrot’s at his job at the record store and Chi-Chi has a double at the diner and he’s both closest and free.  Raditz works at a used bookstore that’s open four days a week for five hours so it’s not like he doesn’t have ample free time.  Being in their apartment is a nice relief from the old parchment and silverfish corpse smell of his job or the “four guys in their twenties living in a two-room apartment” funk of his own place.

“Uncle Raditz?”

“Hmm?”

Gohan scrambles off of him and he’s able to stretch his legs and pop his back.  He turns and looks at him and, shit, he looks almost exactly like Chi-Chi.  He remembers when Kakarrot first said “this is the girl they’re making tutor me,” she had the exact same face on.

“What’s up, little dude?” he asks again, more clearly.

“Uncle Raditz, you’re gay, right?”

He isn’t sure if his brother and Chi-Chi had had that talk with him and he doesn’t want to be the one responsible for it.

“Uh…”

He bares his teeth a little, which reminds Raditz oddly of himself.  Whenever Kakarrot didn’t go along with him in whatever he wanted when they were kids, he’d make that face.

“You like boys, right?” he continues. “So that means you’re gay?”

Maybe they  _ have _ had a talk or, more likely, Gohan is just super observant.  Raditz is fairly certain the kid’s a genius, but it could be his bias towards his own family.

“Yeah, I mean, sorta.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Like, yeah, I only like boys so I’m gay but you can like boys and be bi.  Y’know, like Uncle Vegeta is?”

Gohan nods.  Raditz decides it’s wise not to mention Kakarrot’s sexuality since he doesn’t know if that’s been brought up yet and he does  _ not _ want that on him.  And, anyway, it’s best to keep it simple.

“Why?”

“You should have a boyfriend.”

That isn’t what he’s expecting.

“What?”

Gohan nods and then starts to busy himself with one of the coloring books Chi-Chi laid out on the table.

“Being in love makes people happy and I want you to be happy.”

He’s touched.

“Aw, thanks, Gohan.” He reaches out to ruffle his hair.

He watches him mess with his little plastic case full of crayons and scoots closer to the table.

“Uncle Raditz?”

“Yeah?”

Gohan looks at him very seriously and he thinks that he’s going to try and set him up with his preschool teacher or something.

“Yeah?” he repeats with less certainty.

“Do you think my mommy and daddy are gonna get married?”

_ Oh, shit.  Oh, shit, shit, shit… _

“Uh…”

“Sharpner in my class says that parents have to be married and mine aren’t so that makes me a…” He lowers his eyes and quietly says, “a bad word.”

The kid is four and probably parroting whatever  _ his _ parents told him but Raditz still feels protective rage bubble up inside him.

“You aren’t,” he assures him. “And, uh, your parents want to wait for the right time.”

He figures that it’s a safe answer.  Chi-Chi and Kakarrot go back and forth and break up and get back together even more than he and Turles did.  He can only imagine how messy that would be if they had legal paperwork involved.

This seems to placate Gohan, at least for the moment.

“Okay.  Do you wanna color with me?”

Raditz exhales in relief.

“Sure, little dude.”

\--

Kakarrot remembers walking into the detention room in seventh grade and seeing him for the first time.  He was a grade ahead and everyone had already heard of him.  The kid who had been tossed out of his private school for breaking another kid’s nose.  He’d been sent to detention that day for accidentally mouthing off to the teacher.  Kakarrot was always in trouble for that.  He would speak without thinking, without malice, and accidentally piss the teacher off.  It didn’t surprise him to see the new kid there, if what people said about him was true.  He’d sat behind him and wanted to ask his name or anything about him but instead he’d asked, “How’d you break that kids nose?” and he’d said nothing, just curled his lip, and then, finally, said, “I hit him in the face with a lunch tray.”

Now it’s ten years later and they’re sitting across from each other on the cluttered, matted carpet, facing one another with their guitars.  Kakarrot’s surprised how they came together not just as friends but as musicians.  He snorts at himself--he doesn’t  _ feel _ like a musician, even after all these years of playing together.  Musicians are serious artists.  He’s still just Kakarrot, the guy who got his girlfriend pregnant after high school and who works in the same dying record store for the same gross old guy where he’s worked since he was sixteen.

They sit like this for hours, practicing their guitars.  It’s easier now than when they first started--their playing is second nature.  The weaving of their guitars to make a unified sound, no lead and no rhythm.

“Wow, my brother was pissed.”

He feels guilty about sleeping with Turles, even all these years later, but he’s always been terrible at stopping himself from doing anything.  He had this friend back in elementary school, Krillin, who was always stopping him from climbing trees or jumping fences or doing anything else that would inevitably bring bodily harm onto him.  Krillin never got mad at him after it happened.  When Kakarrot fell skateboarding and broke his arm after Krillin told him not to ride it down the hill, he just sighed and signed his cast.

He screws his face up at the thought--he hadn’t thought about Krillin in years.  He’d moved away the summer after fourth grade and after that, he hadn’t really had any friends until he met Vegeta three years later.

“Gee, I wonder why.”

He pauses and lights a cigarette and Kakarrot waves away the smoke.

“Our songs are better,” he says. “No offense.”

He isn’t sure why he adds the tag on since Raditz isn’t here to be offending over his twenty-year-old self’s songwriting abilities.

“My songs are better,” Vegeta corrects. “Yours are okay.”

“The ones we write together are the best ones and you know it.”

He responds by blowing smoke in his face so Kakarrot smacks the cigarette out of his mouth.  It lands on the carpet, the lit end burning a hole in it.

“Shit!”

Together, they lunge for it but end up knocking their foreheads together.  Kakarrot groans as pain erupts in his head--why is Vegeta’s head so  _ hard?-- _ and falls backwards.  His guitar strap goes slack and he feels the body of it hit him in the throat.  By the time he’s recovered, Vegeta’s gotten his cigarette back and is taking a drag on it.  Kakarrot stares at the little burn mark marring the shag carpeting and winces.

“I don’t think you’re getting your security deposit back.”

To his surprise, instead of a snarl, Vegeta just shrugs in response.

“I’m pretty sure we already lost it when Turles invented Hammer Darts.”

He nods, vaguely remembering that night.  They were all very, very drunk--except Broly, who gets tipsy at most.  Kakarrot barely ever spends time with him but he’s certain that he still doesn’t like him for whatever reason.

“I like this new one you wrote,” he says to change the subject.  He points at an open notebook that narrowly avoided being lit on fire by the dropped cigarette. “It’s almost happy.”

Most of the songs Vegeta writes are dark and angry and full of expletives.  The new ones he’s working on are nearly cheery.  It makes Kakarrot think of those drawings he’d do as a kid where he’d color a rainbow pattern and then cover it in black crayon.  The songs now are like when he’d scratch away and see the color beneath.

“So you really like Bulma, huh?”

He shrugs. “I don’t like anyone.”

It’s a lie but he doesn’t pester him about it.  He’s already been hit once today.  Kakarrot adjusts the strap of his guitar and shrugs.

“Alright, then.”

He juts his chin towards the song they’re working on and, without another word, they start playing again.


	4. And In Your Kiss I Taste 15 Beers and the Kitchen Floor

The sea of faces before them undulates as people thrash and shake to their music.  All the tables and chairs have been pushed back and he’s certain that Shugesh is regretting how they “get the young crowd in.”  Everything is reaching a fever pitch.  They’re a bottle of shaken soda about to erupt.

They end together, guitars crashing, cymbals vibrating, and Kakarrot grabs the microphone.

“Okay, we’re Apetail, this is our last show before we go on tour in a few days--thank you Monkey’s Paw and Uncle Shugesh and all these people here just, like, wow--”

Vegeta wrestles the microphone from his hand. “Fuck off.  Let’s go.”

Even as he says it, though, he turns to the crowd and acknowledges them with a nod of his head.

It’s still surreal that they’re going to be leaving on tour.  They’ll be playing in different cities, different states, and people will know their names.

“Where are we going tonight?” Raditz asks.

He’s looking at a guy who’s eyeing him from the bar.  His hair is probably blond but it looks white under the lights of the bar.

“My dad put a lock on the greenhouse,” Vegeta says.

That might be true but Kakarrot also knows that they’re nearing the anniversary of his mother’s death and he doesn’t like going near the greenhouse when it approaches.  The guy from the bar saunters over like he knows them.

“My mates and I have a place,” he says and then adds, “couldn’t help overhearing.”

Kakarrot wonders how he could hear when his own ears are still ringing.

“Mates?” Vegeta asks, parodying his Australian accent.

Raditz elbows him in the side, clearly trying to get him to show good faith to this guy who’s offering them a place to party.

“You were good up there,” he says it to all of them but his eyes are trained on Raditz.

Kakarrot suddenly feels weirdly protective of his brother.  He doesn’t trust this guy.  Turles doesn’t seem to either.

“Look, we’re going on tour next week,” he says, “I’m not really in the mood to get stabbed by you and your friends.”

He tosses some of his hair over his shoulder and laughs.

“S’nothing.  We’re just gonna have a good time.  Promise.”

He’s going to say something else but then he shakes his head.

“Hey, wait--now I know where I know you from!”

The subject change is abrupt and Kakarrot is reeling in a way he can’t blame on post-show adrenaline.  More than that, he isn’t even sure it’s a come on since he isn’t saying it to Raditz.  The guy’s pointing now, directly at Vegeta.

“You do?” He crosses his arms and cocks a brow.

“Yeah--we went to Cold Academy together.  You’re the one who got tossed for breakin’ Zarbon’s nose.”

It seems to break the ice, at least, because Turles has gone from scowling to laughing.

“I always wondered if that story was actually true.”

Vegeta ignores him and glares at the guy. “I don’t remember you.”

He ignores him and addresses the rest of them, grinning broadly.

“He did it in the middle of the cafeteria, too.  Just winged him right in the face with a tray.  Dunno what brought it on.”

“It doesn’t fucking matter,” he snaps. “Just tell us where to go already.”

\--

King Kai has them set up to do press stuff and a big party with all the bands on the tour but this is the last party just for them.  The annoying Australian guy provided them with a big house that he and his friends apparently rent.  It’s easy to lose him, though, even if Raditz seemed reluctant to do so.

This guy, Vegeta’s old classmate if his claims are to be believed, doesn’t matter, though.  He’s just a catalyst, a way for them to get here.  More and more people crowd the house and it’s amazing that these were the people at the show, the people who were there for them.

Raditz shoves his way through the crush of bodies trying to find him, or at least his friends.  Everyone’s wearing black or dark colors and he’s more than a little drunk so they all blur together.

A hand, feather-light, touches his elbow and he turns.  Chi-Chi is looking up at him and he didn’t know when she got here.

“Where’s Gohan?” he asks.

“At my dad’s,” she assures him. “Where’s Kakarrot?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

She frowns and pushes her hair back.  Raditz shakes his head and he’s tipsy enough to be sweet about it when he offers to help her look.

“There’s a pool out back,” he tells her, “Odds are good he’s doing naked handstands in it.”

She laughs and echoes, “Odds are good.”

The deck is packed with people--were they all at the show?--but it’s easy to spot his brother.  A gaggle of sweet things are surrounding him, all dressed and made up in various subcultures of punk or goth.  Beside him, Chi-Chi bristles and Raditz wonders if he’s going to have to mediate a fight.  A girl puts her hand on his shoulder and Kakarrot hitches it to brush it off.  He has his phone in front of him and, as they get closer, he can hear him talking.

“And this is when we took Gohan to the zoo.  He liked feeding the goats.”

Chi-Chi lets out a breathy little sigh-laugh and walks forward.

“Kakarrot.”

He looks up and grins broadly.  Up close, Raditz can see that his pupils are the size of pennies and his eyes are a little red.

“Babe!”

He jumps to his feet, disregarding the girls, and wraps his arms around her.  He’s kissing her neck and Raditz decides to go before it becomes a sickeningly adorable reunion.

He wants to find that Australian guy.  It feels like eons since he’s gotten laid.  It’s hard finding guys that are into guys and then are also into him.  He thought being in a band would give him some kind of cachet, but his luck hasn’t been that great.

Raditz reckons his time is better spent finding the others.  It gives him something to do, anyway.  He hates the crush of crowds.  A few people grab at him as he passes, telling him he sounded good and he acknowledges them with a nod.  He isn’t sure why he feels out of sorts walking through the party.  Maybe it’s because he’s twenty-five and the whole thing still feels high school: people raiding the fridge, drinking beer from plastic cups--it all feels the same.

It doesn’t at all feel like they’re on the brink of something, even when it should.  Raditz rubs his forehead tiredly.  He needs more to drink.

\--

Bulma honestly isn’t sure why she’s here.  The party reminds her of something from the past.  She’s going to be a _doctor_ soon, if all goes to plan, and it feels--off.  The address is right (she got the abrupt text since she hadn’t gone to the show) and she takes a deep breath before walking in the open door.

It’s not just the party and all the people acting like teens (or who actually _are_ teens, she can’t tell) around her.  It’s uncertainty.  And she really, really hates uncertainty.  Of course it has to do with Vegeta.  She can’t even call him her boyfriend because they never talked about it.  He won’t talk about _anything._  She feels like she knows as much about him as she did in that all night deli all those months ago.  Hell, he told her more then because at least he told her his name.

It’s getting frustrating and she’s reaching about all that she can take.  It’s been seven months since they got together and she feels no closer to him.  She can’t even ask who the fuck hurt him because she knows that she won’t get an answer.  That’s the most frustrating thing of all--the way he stays stubbornly shut.  She’s about had it.  They’ve been together for over half a year and he’s leaving in three days time for God only knows how long.  Bulma has to talk to him _now_ and see if she’s going to be waiting for him to come back or not.

Something with heavy bass is playing on the stereo as she makes her way through the sea of bodies.  She feels like she’s in some shitty “modern update” of _The Great Gatsby_ or something.  Part of her expects to find someone face down in the pool.  Christ, she feels like a fucking chaperone--when did she get this old?  This is so unfair.

Bulma steps out onto the deck and is a bit disappointed to see only living bodies in the pool.  She looks around, trying to find _someone_ familiar.  She looks for Broly, who’s taller than most anyone here, or Raditz who’s buffer, but sees no one.

A pair of arms snake around her waist and suddenly a mouth is on her neck.  She feels the prod of his piercings through the thin material of his shirt and knows, at least, this isn’t a particularly handsy stranger with a deathwish.

Despite her conflicting emotions, she leans against him.

“Hey.”

“Hey, back.” His breath already smells boozy but, to be fair, she can’t see another way to get through this party.

“This party sucks.”

“Well, it’s hosted by some asshole I went to middle school with so--go figure.”

This is--something.  A little peek, maybe, into what he keeps so locked up.

“A friend?”

Bulma turns around and presses their foreheads together.  It’s rather convenient that they’re about the same height.

“No.  I don’t even remember him, but he remembered me.”

“You left an impression.”

He pauses and his lips twist before he says, “You could say that.”

She sighs.  There he goes being all tight-lipped again.  It’d be one thing if she was sure about his feelings for her, at least, but she’s not.  Not once has he called her his girlfriend or even said that he liked her.  He claims to _show_ it, but action’s action and she needs words.

“Can we go somewhere quiet?” At his wolfish grin, she adds, “to talk.”

“Talk?  About what?”

Bulma sighs again.  This isn’t going to be easy.  Hell, she’d probably have an easier time giving a crocodile a root canal.  Even so, she’s made her choice and it has to be done.  Taking him by the hand, she leads him to a corner of the spacious yard, away from most of the merriment.  She can feel the vibrations of the bass through the grass under her feet but she pays them no mind.

“Okay, so...what are we doing?”

Vegeta blinks at her. “Standing here.  Talking.”

She doesn’t know if he’s being deliberately contrary or if he’s drunker than she thought.

“No, I mean.  In general.  Like...I feel like we’ve been together for a while and I still know jack shit about you.”

He screws his face up.

“That’s not true.”

“Bullshit.” Already, she can feel her temper rising and it’s not going to be good for this conversation.

“And besides, what’s the fucking point?  What does it matter?” Vegeta shrugs. “I’m fucked and I don’t like talking about it.”

Bulma leans against a tree and realizes that they’ve stumbled into a planter and are currently trampling over dirt and flowers.

“It’s not just that.  You’ve told me nothing about me...us...whatever.  It’s like, where the fuck are we going?”

She runs her fingers through her hair and sighs again.  They’re off to a great start.

“What does it matter?” he repeats. “Like, you want me to bare my soul to you?  It’s not that deep.”

Bulma isn’t sure if he means it the way he sounds but they both realize the implication at the same time.

“Wait.  That came out wr--”

She cuts him off by pushing him away.  Her anger is reaching a boiling point.  It’s hitting the stage where it just comes out like vomit.

“Fuck off,” she snarls.

It’s enough for now and if she leaves, she can go home and cool her head and try to have this conversation again before he leaves.  Vegeta seems to have other plans, though, if the footfalls behind her are any indication.

They’re almost back to the party when he calls out, “Alright, what the fuck is this really about?”

Bulma whirls around and puts her hands on her hips.

“It’s exactly what I said.  You play your tortured bullshit and never open up and stew in your negativity and I can’t take it anymore!  It’s been seven months--I should know more about you!”

His face scrunches up in anger and he looks like a put out little puppy.  Under any other circumstances, it’d be funny.

“Maybe it’s none of your goddamn business!  No one knows my shit except for me and these assholes.” He gestures to vaguely to the location of his bandmates, “because they were there!  Why the fuck would I tell you?”

“Because I care about you, jackass!”

People are starting to look at them and someone’s turned the stereo down.

“Well, why’d you go and do that for?” He has the nerve to smirk and she sees red.

“I don’t know!” she snaps, “because obviously we’re not on the same page and I just wasted seven months of my life.”

Something changes on his face but he immediately covers it up and--there it is.  He can’t just let himself be open or even start to explain why he is the way that he is.  She can’t take it anymore.

“We started fucking the second time we met,” he snarls back, “Don’t act like it was anything more!”

Vegeta’s lying and she knows he’s lying but the fact that he refuses to own up to his own feelings has sealed it.  She doesn’t need him and she has to leave.

“You know,” she says, because she has to add insult to injury and it’s the first thing that comes to mind, “it doesn’t even matter that your dick is the size of a tractor exhaust pipe.  It’s not worth the headache.”

He blushes, clearly embarrassed, and the crowd around them begins to titter.  Bulma breathes out, glad to have the last word and, admittedly, play to their audience.

“Bulma--”

“Nope.  Done.” She shakes her head. “I can’t do this anymore.”

She pauses for a moment, giving him that one last chance to say something, to even apologize for fucking it up but he stays with that surly look on his face and she knows she has to leave.

As she does, she hears someone ask him, shocked, “Is it really that big?”

\--

Raditz sits on the roof, a beer bottle loosely held in his fingers.  He tilts his face up, looking at the stars.  The Australian guy and his friends live in a nice part of town, out of the city.  Where their apartment is, there’s too much light pollution to properly stargaze.  Looking up at the stars reminds him of when he was a kid and he and Kakarrot would lie out back and look up for hours.

It’s simple and he relishes it.  He knows things are going to change on this tour, for better or for worse.  It’s not quite a premonition but it’s definitely a gut feeling.

He hears someone shove their way through the window behind him and he’s about to tell them to fuck off when he sees that it’s Broly.

“Hey,” he says and scoots over to give him some room.

Broly grins too wide, much too wide, and Raditz sees that he’s holding a red plastic cup.  Something has to be up if _Broly’s_ drunk.

“I get why people drink so much,” he tells him very seriously. “It lets you forget all the icky things in life.”

His speech is slurred and Raditz takes the cup from his hand.  His bottle’s empty so he places it inside the cup and gently puts it next to him.

“I’m cutting you off.”

Broly’s grin somehow widens and he nuzzles his head against his shoulder.

“You’re so sweet,” he coos. “I love you.”

Raditz chuckles.  He’s never seen Broly go beyond buzzed before so this is new.  He pats his knee.

“Yeah, I love you, too, buddy.”

He shakes his head furiously. “No.  I really love you.  Really, really love you.”

“And you’re really, really drunk.”

“I’m not!”

But he has to be because Broly leans forward and kisses him.  It’s sloppy and wet and clumsy.  He pushes him away gently.

“Broly, no.” He shakes his head. “You don’t want this.”

“Yes, I do.  I love you, Raditz.”

“Broles…”

The window is the new hot spot to be, it seems, because Nappa sticks his head out of it.

“Hey, Vegeta’s pretty messed up,” he reports. “We should probably get him home.”

Broly stands up, suddenly a lot more sure on his feet than he was before.  Raditz looks down at the dark grass beneath them and wonders if he’s just going to jump.

“I want to go, too.”

Raditz follows him through the window, feeling shitty.  It’s not that he doesn’t think Broly’s cute, it’s that...he’s Broly.  He’s always kind of lumped him in with Kakarrot as another little brother.  Plus, inter-brand relationships are doomed to fail.  It’s already bad enough with him and Turles; he doesn’t want this to turn into Fleetwood Mac.

Nappa leads them downstairs to the living room.  Vegeta’s slumped on the floor, head between his knees.  Interested bystanders surround him but part as they approach.  Raditz crouches down and places his hand on his forehead but his own palm is so hot and sweaty that he can’t tell which one of them is ill.  Gently, he shakes him.

“Geta?”

There’s no response at first but then he blearily lifts his head.  He looks at Raditz for a brief second before throwing up all over him.

\--

It takes him, Broly, and Nappa to get Vegeta into the van.  He stays out of it for most of the way, head bobbing against the back of the seat, but when they pull up to the apartment he throws up on the sidewalk the second he’s out of the car.

“Well, at least we won’t have to explain weird stains and smells to Turles,” Nappa muses.

Dimly, Raditz wonders where Turles is.  Odds are good he’s probably getting high in the bathroom at the party with someone who he’ll entice by offering to show them his dick piercing.  He’s not bitter, he’s not bitter...he has to concentrate on getting his very drunk friend upstairs.

Somehow, he still has some of his stubbornness intact and the only way to get him upstairs is for Raditz to tug on his hands while Nappa and Broly shove him from behind.  They manage to get him in the door but then Vegeta decides all he wants to do is lie on the floor and roll around.

“You’d be better off in bed,” Broly tells him as he dabs at his sweaty face with the corner of his flannel shirt.

He flaps a hand at him. “Go ‘way.”

Raditz sighs. “You claimed the bedroom when we moved in--go sleep in your damn bed.”

Nappa growls, apparently having had enough of this.

“Come on, then.”

He picks Vegeta up and heaves him over his shoulder to carry him into the bedroom.  Once he’s there, he dumps him on the bed and arranges his limbs in the recovery position.

“Someone that short should not be that strong,” he says with a shake of his head.

Broly bites his lip and turns to look at him with fearful eyes. “Should we, like, call someone?  I’ve never seen him this bad before.  It could be alcohol poisoning.”

Raditz doesn’t say it but he wonders if Broly is including the time he and Kakarrot claimed they could “see through space” after they recreated pre-ban 4loko and Vegeta tried to imitate “that scene from _Footloose_ with the cars” and damn near killed himself.

“I’ve seen a lot of people in various stages of fucked up over the years.  He’s not that far gone.”

Nappa finishes this with a nod of his head and Raditz is suddenly very glad that he’s passing up on months of freelance bouncer work to come with them on tour.

“I’ll stay with him,” he says. “I’ll, uh, watch him and--”

“And what?” Broly snarls, his entire demeanor far different from before and definitely different from normal. “Make sure he doesn’t choke on his own vomit?”

“I--”

“Don’t pretend you give a shit, alright?  Just don’t!”

With that, Broly storms from the room and Nappa, confused, follows him.  Raditz is left with one paralytic friend passed out on the bed and not much else.


	5. Alone at a Table for Two

Someone outside has the bright idea to do construction this early in the morning.  Vegeta cracks an eye open and groans.  He sits up and immediately lies back down as all the blood rushes to his head.  He grabs it and it’s then that he realizes that no one’s jackhammering outside--the hammering is in his head.

He doesn’t remember much from last night except Bulma leaving after ripping him a new one.  Shit--Bulma.  He stares at his phone someone (Broly, probably) put on his nightstand but decides against messaging her.  After their fight, what’s there left to say?

He drags himself from the bed and manages to make it into the main room.  When he’s hungover like this, he can really feel his hubris for demanding he get the one bedroom when they moved in.  If he slept on a futon like everyone else, it’d be easier to make it to the kitchen.

He is lucky, though, that Broly’s addicted to pickles because it means there’s always a jar in the fridge.  He drinks some of the brine and winces as he swallows.  He surveys the rest of the contents and finds nothing.  Growling, he slams it shut but that sound alone is enough to have him grabbing his head.

“Good morning, your highness.”

Turles sounds smug and he’s using Bulma’s nickname for him, which makes him even angrier.  It doesn’t matter to his hungover mind that the rest of them have called him “your highness” for years--he can only think of her.

“I need food,” he growls. “I’m going to Waffle House.”

“Awh, the pickle juice is working, I think.  Our little boy’s making full sentences already!”

He turns to Raditz who doesn’t look smug but he doesn’t look super concerned either.  He glowers at them both.

“Fuck off.”

Turles grins again.  He somehow has managed to never have a hangover.  Vegeta’s seen him blackout drunk and vomiting everywhere but then he always wakes up the next morning, maybe a little groggy, but otherwise fine.  Meanwhile here he is, in his clothes from last night that smell like whiskey and vomit, trying to keep his balance.

“Where are my cigarettes?”

Raditz points to his denim jacket that’s in a heap on the floor.  He grabs it and starts to head for the door.  He needs greasy food-- _ now. _

“Don’t forget to shower when you get back,” Raditz calls after him. “We have that thing with the other bands and the label today.”

He acknowledges him by giving him the finger and shuts the door.  Outside, he takes maybe one step out the door before he trips over something--no.  Someone.

“Kakarrot, what the fuck are you doing here?”

He looks up at him, bleary-eyed, and he thinks he might still be high for a minute until he realizes that he’s been crying.  Shit.   _ Shit. _

“I’m hungover,” he tells him, “and you damn well know I’m not equipped for this shit even when I’m not.”

Kakarrot shrugs and balls into himself.  That’s--odd.  He drops his arms and glares up at the sky as if someone up there is to blame for his problems.

“What happened?” he asks despite himself.

“Chi-Chi broke up with me.”

That’s no surprise.  They were due for another breakup.  Wisely, he doesn’t say it.  His mouth’s gotten him in enough trouble since last night.  Plus, who’s he to talk?  He’s royally fucked things up with Bulma, probably for good.  Kakarrot and Chi-Chi, at least, have history to put them back together.  Hell, they have a kid to do that, too.

“What happened?”

He feels awkward and too tall sitting next to him (which never happens) and he’s feeling less queasy, so he sits down.  Immediately, he regrets it because Kakarrot’s wound around him like a leech.

“I forgot to tell her we were going on tour.  I just...didn’t and she’s mad and says I’m thoughtless and-and--I feel like it’s for good this time.”

He’s never said that before.  Kakarrot usually takes their breakups in stride because he knows they’ll find their way back to each other.  He’s upset, yeah, but Vegeta’s never seen him look truly devastated.

“She said she’s had enough and she’s sick of it.”

Kakarrot smears his nose into his shirt, leaving a streak of snot on the black material.

“I love her,” he whimpers, “her and Gohan, they’re my life just like you guys.”

Awkwardly, he pats on his back.

“There...there.” Vegeta pauses.  Shit, he’s bad at this. “You wanna come with me to Waffle House?”

Kakarrot looks up and wipes his leaking nose with his arm--and, ew--before he nods.

“Sure.”

\--

The label has rented out a cheap banquet hall for the meeting and after party.  They’ve also provided a single bus since one of the band’s doesn’t have transportation and the roadies and gear need a place to go.  Raditz is glad that he’s not on that bus.  It looks like a strong gust of wind would blow it over.

They arrive in a sorry state.  Kakarrot’s destroyed by Chi-Chi, Vegeta’s destroyed by Bulma (and still a little hungover, probably), and Broly  _ still _ isn’t speaking to him over that kiss on the roof.  Independently of one another, they’d all chosen to wear black so they arrive at the party looking like a funeral party that’s lost their way.

“You’re here,” King Kai says, surprised. “Have you met the head of the label, yet?”

Immediately, they’re thrust into conversation with some laidback-looking old guy in sunglasses.  To Raditz, he actually looks like one of the members of ZZ Top.  He misses his name but he smiles and nods in the appropriate places as he tells them they’re gonna be stars.

There’s other managers and press people here and the juxtaposition of this to the high school shenanigans from last night is staggering.

He spots casually-dressed younger people and assumes that these are the other bands.

“Is there anything to drink?” Vegeta asks once ZZ Top leaves.

King Kai gestures to a counter against the wall. “It’s an open bar but don’t take that as an excuse to--and he’s gone.”

He turns to them and sighs.

“Also there’s no smoking in here.  Make sure he knows that.”

Kakarrot gives him a salute and takes off after him.  Raditz wants a drink but he stays put.  Turles slings an arm around his shoulders and he lets him.  Broly stalks off without another word, his expression drawn in and remote.

“What happened last night?” Turles asks.

“Nothing good,” he assures him.

Kakarrot and Vegeta return, his brother holding a can of beer and Vegeta somehow holding an entire bottle of vodka.

“How did you get that?”

“I told the bartender I’d write a song about him.  It was surprisingly easy.”

Raditz puts a hand to his forehead.  They’re going to make a  _ great _ impression with everyone else.

As if on cue, he spots four guys coming over.  He vaguely recognizes them as Kame Kami.  The guitarist, at least.  He’s been at the same shows with Yamcha once or twice.  He’s a good time if his drunken memories are to be trusted.

“Hey, you’re Apetail, yeah?”

Yamcha smiles and cocks his head and, without the haze of alcohol, Raditz can appreciate that he’s pretty cute.  He’s got loads of dark hair spilling down his back and an open, grinning face.  To his left is a scowling guy in a knit hat and to his right is another scowling guy holding a cup of water.

“You’re Kame Kami,” he says back and no one can say that he isn’t a sparkling conversationalist. “Uh, I mean, I’m Raditz.  This is Kakarrot, Vegeta, and--”

“Turles,” he interjects. “Yeah, we know you guys.  Uh, know  _ of _ you, anyway.”

At least Yamcha seems to be in the same awkward boat as him.

“This is Piccolo and Tien.  They’re clearly very happy to meet you.”

Tien, the one on the left, rolls his eyes, but Piccolo doesn’t say anything.  The fourth guy, much shorter than the rest of them, steps out from behind Tien.

“Oh!” Yamcha says, “and this is--”

“Krillin!” Kakarrot exclaims.

“Goku?!”

Goku?  Raditz vaguely remembers that kids in elementary school used to call him that, especially this one kid who would hang around the trailer.  Was his name Krillin?  His brother is hugging the dude and they’re high-fiving.

“Shit, I haven’t seen you since fourth grade!” Krillin says.  He looks him up and down and adds, “You got tall.”

“You didn’t.”

Krillin sighs and shrugs. “I see that your height is all that’s changed.  Always saying whatever comes to mind.”

Kakarrot grins and it’s the first smile Raditz has seen since his breakup with Chi-Chi.

“I didn’t know you were in a band,” he continues.

Krillin nods.

“I’m the guitarist.”

“I’m the guitarist in my band, too!”

Raditz leaves them to it and goes to mingle as best he can.  He feels Yamcha’s eyes on him as he leaves and it doesn’t feel altogether unpleasant.  A few people come up and introduce themselves and shake his hand but they all kind of blend together.  Truthfully, he’s looking for Broly.  He wants to apologize for last night, for not kissing him back.  He isn’t sure how to let him down yet but that part can wait.

“Hey, you’re the drummer in Apetail, right?”

He stops at the voice, at once flat and flirting, and turns to see a slim guy with dark hair to his shoulders.  His eyes are a pale, sharp blue that seem to immediately drill into his soul.

“Uh, yeah.  Although I prefer Raditz.”

The guy’s lips curve up in a smile that doesn’t  _ quite  _ reach his eyes but still manages to make him look amused.

“I’m Lapis,” he says.  His hands are in his pockets so he clearly doesn’t want to shake.

“Oh.  You’re one of the synth twins?”

“Sadistic Dance, yeah.” He seems so cool, so together, that it’s almost a surprise when he looks away, almost sheepish. “There’s three of us in the group, though.  Not just me and my sister.”

“Oh.  Oops.”

Raditz looks around, trying to find a way to make a mistake before he further sticks his foot in his mouth but Lapis doesn’t seem to mind.

“I’ve been to a couple of your shows.  You’re good.”

“Oh--ah, thanks.  I haven’t...been to...yours.”

He winces.  God, he is not cut out for this shit.  This is why he isn’t a frontman.

“It’s alright.  Our music is an acquired taste, as the critics say.”

“Oh.” He needs to stop saying that. “Nifty.”

_ This sure is a good time to say ‘nifty’ for the first time… _

Lapis’s smile actually reaches his eyes this time and he looks pretty cute.  Shit, between him and Yamcha, he didn’t know there were going to be many cute guys on this tour.

“This should be fun,” he says, tipping his head to the side.  His shiny, dark hair falls in a straight line, some of it obscuring his face.

Raditz isn’t sure what else to say except, “Yeah.”

\--

Going up in front of executives and the head of the label is a bit intimidating.  Kakarrot feels weak in the knees and like he has to go pee really bad.  Three beers and he isn’t sure how many sips of vodka he wheedled out of Vegeta’s bottle will do that.

They stand on a little makeshift stage and King Kai talks them up like he did with the other bands.  Kakarrot’s reminded of when the guidance counselor said he could do with more extracurriculars and shoved him in the spring play his sophomore year.  He had been Mitch in  _ A Streetcar Named Desire _ and he forgot half of his lines and the theatre kids all hated him for it.  Now he stands in front of a bunch of suits and ZZ Top (none of them can remember his name and that’s probably bad) with the others.

“This is Apetail.  We put out their EP last year.”

He introduces them all and he sees his brother go to put his arm around Vegeta and Broly.  To his surprise, Broly shoves him hard.  Raditz wheels back and crashes into Vegeta who’s apparently caught off guard and tumbles off the stage.  The look on his face is so priceless that Kakarrot bursts into laughter.  King Kai looks like he’s about to shit his pants and ZZ Top and the other suits are looking at them like they’re a troupe of performing monkeys.

“Yes.” King Kai adjusts his glasses as he speaks into the mic. “Um.  Thank you, boys.”

Broly stalks off the stage and Raditz sheepishly follows.  Turles trails after, looking confused and lost.  Kakarrot realizes he’s the only one onstage and dashes after them.

“Seriously, I go and do lines in the bathroom at one party and the next day everything’s all fucked up.”

Turles shakes his head as he holds his hand out to help Vegeta to his feet.

“Chi-Chi broke up with Kakarrot, Bulma broke up with Vegeta, and Raditz…” Broly stops and looks at him and even Kakarrot feels the hurt emanating off of him. “Nothing.”

Turles lets out a low whistle.

“Wow.  Great timing, everyone--good job.”

He doesn’t know what happened between Broly and his brother.  Broly doesn’t like him so it’s not like he’s going to tell  _ him _ anything.

He wants another beer but he still kind of has to pee.  One more would probably push him over the edge and he isn’t even sure if this place has a bathroom.

“I guess we should mingle,” Raditz says, wincing. “And--oh.  Uh, hi.”

A kid from one of the other bands introduced, U6, is standing in front of them.  He was their guitarist, maybe?  Kakarrot wasn’t paying attention.

“Um...I’ve seen you guys a few times.  You’re really good.” He sounds nervous and he’s built like a twelve-year-old.  Is this kid even old enough to go off on tour on his own?

Kakarrot’s paternal instincts--dulled by beer but still there--go on alert.

“How old are you?” he blurts.

The kid blushes and mumbles, “Nineteen.”

Oh, so not really a kid but still a kid.  He gets it.  Wow he has to pee--the vodka’s hitting him now.

“You’re just.  Really good.”

He’s speaking to all of them but his eyes are only on Vegeta, who’s drinking from his bottle like it’s full of Poland Spring and not Stoli.  The kid looks like he wants to say more, but then he just smiles once last time and leaves.  Kakarrot figures this is also a good time to go find a bathroom.

“Be right back.”

It turns out that the rental space  _ does _ have a bathroom but it’s a single stall affair and there’s a line at least six people deep.  He bounces from foot to foot, wrinkling his nose as the slight need to go to the bathroom intensifies.

He turns his head around, looking for another bathroom or  _ something. _  All he can see is a trashcan.  Kakarrot glances from side to side before darting to it.  It’s tall and metal with a top that curves in around a rather large opening.  Just standing, he can’t quite aim it in there so his alcohol-numbed mind decides that there’s only one course of action.

He unzips his jeans and wiggles them down his hips before hopping up on the trashcan.  He angles himself down and sags in relief as he finally gets to go to the bathroom.  It isn’t until a few people walk by does he realize that peeing in a trashcan in a room full of people is probably a bad idea.

The two girls that make up the rest of U6 stare at him.  The one with the ponytail ducks behind her can of Coke.

“Hi!” Kakarrot exclaims.  He holds his hand out. “I’m Kakarrot--I’m the guitarist in Apetail.”

Neither moves to shake his hand.

“What are you doing?” the other demands.

He shrugs and they both leave.  Kakarrot hops off and zips back up and then freezes.  He turns to the closest person, Piccolo from Kame Kami, and stares at him wide-eyed.

“Did I just pee in a trashcan?”

He nods, face schooled in a look of disgust.

“You sure did.”

\--

“I can’t believe this is the second time--in as many days--that we’ve had to leave early because Vegeta got too fucked up.”

Raditz sighs and tries to catch Broly’s eye but he looks away.  He can’t look at Raditz just yet.  He’s hurt and embarrassed--and  _ of course _ he doesn’t like him back.  It’s like his dad always says: he’s worthless and no one would love him  _ but _ him.

They’re leaving at King Kai’s behest.  He’d said, “At least get him some water” followed by a remark that they were all going to send him to an early grave.  Broly’s sure he only means half of it.  Without Nappa, the duty of carrying their lead singer out falls to Raditz as he’s the second biggest.  Vegeta’s draped over his shoulder, not quite as far gone as last night, but drunk enough to be obnoxious.  He keeps singing snatches of songs from the eighties far too loud and everyone is looking at them.  With his drunken shenanigans combined with the incident on the stage and the apparent fact that Kakarrot pissed in a trashcan, they’re off to a great start with the other bands.

“According to Yamcha, we have a reputation for being rowdy,” Broly says quietly.

“Well, at least we’re living up to it,” Turles says with a wink.  He bumps Broly with his hip and he smiles a little despite his sour mood. “Right, Geta?”

He lifts his face up. “S’gonna take a lot to take me awaaay from youuu!  There’s nothing that a hundred men or more can ever doo!”

Raditz sighs. “Can someone shut him up?”

Kakarrot puts a hand over his mouth and Vegeta slaps it down.

“I BLESS THE RAINS DOWN IN AAAAFRICAAAAAA!”

“Did you at least wash your hands?” Broly asks him and Kakarrot has the nerve to look sheepish.  God, he’s annoying.

“Get in the fucking car,” Raditz growls once they’re outside.

Turles opens the door and it’s far more difficult than it was the night before to load him in.  Vegeta is simultaneously a ragdoll and a steel-limbed spider monkey as he refuses to get in the car for no reason other than to annoy the others.  Broly’s glad he rarely drinks.  Last night, when he was only moderately inebriated, was embarrassing enough.  He doesn’t want to lose control like this.

“Need a hand?”

Broly isn’t sure when Yamcha came up but he has his hands in the pockets of his jacket and is smiling at them.  It’s not a rude smile, more like smiling is just the way he normally holds his face.  He’s cute, Broly thinks.  Not as cute as Raditz but he’s definitely cute.

“Hey, you!” Vegeta cries. “Fuck off.”

“Do you even know who this is?” Raditz asks, clearly exasperated.

“No, I do not.  But--”

He’s distracted, so Turles is able to shove him in the passenger seat and slam the door.

“Thanks.”

Raditz and Yamcha hold eye contact for a second too long and Broly starts chewing his lip.

“I didn’t really do anything.”

“You distracted him.” Raditz pauses. “We aren’t usually this bad, I swear.”

Yamcha laughs and tucks some hair behind his ears.  He does it quickly like it’s a nervous tic.

“Hey, the tour will be interesting, at least.”

They share a laugh and Broly locks eyes with Turles who shoots him a very sympathetic look.  Broly keeps chewing his lip, not sure what else to do.  There’s a pounding sound that breaks up their little staring-flirting session and Broly can’t believe he’s grateful for how wasted Vegeta is.  He’s on his knees on the seat, smacking both of his palms on the window.

“His girlfriend dumped him,” Kakarrot explains.  He turns to Raditz and says, “We should take him home.”

Yamcha nods, still smiling like he and Raditz are alone on a desert island or some shit.  Broly tastes blood and figures that he should stop chewing his already chapped, peeling lips.

“See you in a few days?”

Raditz smiles back. “Count on it.”

Broly swallows his bloodied spit and looks away.


	6. I'd Cross My Heart, I'd Hope to Die if That's What You Said You wanted

Chi-Chi carefully holds the knife as she cuts the crusts off of Gohan’s sandwich.  He’s going through a phase where he doesn’t want to eat them and if she doesn’t cut them off, he’ll tear them off himself.

“Where’s daddy?” he asks.

He’s kneeling in his seat.  He’s too big for his booster but not quite big enough to sit down on his bottom in a regular chair.  Chi-Chi’s hand flexes over the handle of the knife as she pauses.  She has to word this carefully.

“Oh, um...he’s coming by today to pack for his trip.  You’ll see him then.”

Truthfully, she doesn’t want to see Kakarrot just yet.  Of all the thoughtless, selfish things he’s done, not telling her that he was going to be gone for almost a year is up there.  It’s ambitious, she thinks, for their first tour, but what does she know?  She’s no musician.

“Are you fighting again?”

Normally, she loves how smart and observant her little boy is, but sometimes it’s too much.  She considers lying to him but Gohan normally sees through that, too.

“Yes.”

“Are you broken up again?”

She hesitates for a moment before answering, “Yes.”

Gohan slumps a bit in his seat, obviously put out.  God, how she wishes she and Kakarrot could just get it together--get married, be normal.  It has to be hell on Gohan.  She supposes that it’s on her, since she’s the one who ends it, but he’s just so...so...she doesn’t even know.  He’s been the same way since they were sixteen.  When he was just the boy she had to tutor in chemistry at the behest of her teacher.  Maybe that’s the issue.  They’re twenty-three and he still acts like a teenager.

“You’ll get together again, right?”

Chi-Chi puts a smile on her face. “Of course!”

She puts the knife down and carries the sandwich over to the table.  Gohan happily takes a bite.  The door to the apartment opens and he perks up.

“Daddy!”

Chi-Chi holds a hand up to stop him from bolting from his seat. “Eat your sandwich, Gohan.”

Kakarrot shuts the door behind him and he walks in, head low.

“Hey,” he says quietly. “Uh, I’m just gonna...go pack…”

He shuffles past her and Chi-Chi can’t stop herself from putting a hand on his arm.

“Where’d you sleep last night?”

“Outside Raditz’s apartment--none of them answered to let me in.”

He’s showered, though, and changed his shirt at least, which means he was eventually given entrance.  She’s glad.  She might be angry with him but the thought of him sleeping outside in the dirt isn’t something she’d wish on him.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “for what it’s worth.”

She closes her eyes. “I know you are.”

“I’m not asking for forgiveness,” he continues, “but I am sorry.”

Against her better judgment, Chi-Chi leans into him and Kakarrot wraps his arms around her.

“Give me time,” she tells him. “I’m still mad.”

He nuzzles into the top of her head. “I know.”

She knows Gohan’s watching them and she doesn’t want him to get the wrong, hopeful idea so she extricates herself from his arms.

“Good luck on tour,” she tells him. “Don’t get too famous.”

He laughs.

“Don’t worry, we won’t.”

He looks like he wants to kiss her, but doesn’t and she’s glad, she thinks.  She isn’t sure what she would do if he did.  Kakarrot turns to the table.

“Hey, Gohan.  Wanna help daddy pack?”

He immediately abandons his sandwich and jumps from his seat.

“Yeah!”

“Gohan, no!” she starts but they’re already both in the bedroom.  She sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Kakarrot…”

\--

The label wants to do this big, send-off, group picture before they drive to the first city and, to Broly, it feels a bit more like a class picture.  He has to stand in the back with the other guy from Sadistic Dance because he’s tall--easily the tallest one there--and he feels awkward.  He never knows what to do with his face in photos.  Other than him, because of his height, he’s put with the rest of his bandmates.  Turles is smirking while he holds up his middle finger.  Vegeta has a smoldering cigarette dangling from his mouth.  Kakarrot has hooked his fingers in his cheeks and pulled them apart so he can stick his tongue out.

Only Raditz looks semi-normal: giving a smirk like Turles is, with his thumbs hooked in his belt loops.  He looks undeniably hot, which makes him feel even more embarrassed about the other night.  What was he  _ thinking _ acting on his feelings for Raditz like that?

No one else seems to be having trouble in the photo except for one of the girls in U6.  She looks just as nervous and uncomfortable as him.  She’s half tucked behind the other girl in her group, who’s sticking her tongue out and giving the finger.  King Kai somehow got Nappa to take the picture and it’s mercifully over quickly.

“I feel like it’s a before shot in a horror movie,” Kakarrot remarks. “Y’know, when they first get to the summer camp before the killer starts picking them off, one by one?”

In the time he’s known him, in a weird juxtaposition to his sunny demeanor, Kakarrot is obsessed with horror movies, particularly slasher films.  Raditz shoves him.

“Let’s not jinx ourselves, dude.”

Turles throws his arm around Broly’s shoulders and says, “Hey, if it is a horror movie, at least we know Broly makes it out alive.”

He furrows his brow, not sure where he’s going.

“What?”

“Virgins, my dude.  They always survive horror movies.”

He feels his face heat up and he looks away.

“Lay off him.”

Raditz has been extra nice to him, probably because he feels sorry for him.  He clearly wants to make him feel better after he turned him down.

“I’m just joking.” Turles squeezes him in a one-armed hug.

He lets up and, honestly, it’s impossible to stay mad at Turles--unless, of course, he sleeps with your brother.

“You morons ready?” Nappa spins the keys on one finger and raises a brow.

“What do you think, fearless leader?” Turles tilts his face towards Raditz and smirks.

“Since when am I the fearless leader?” he balks. “Ask Vegeta!”

“He’s compromised.  You’re second-in-command.”

Raditz throws his arms out.

“I am not.  If anything, Kakarrot is second-in-command.”

Vegeta glares and puts his cigarette out on Turles’s leather jacket.

“And I’m not compromised, asshole.”

Turles bats at his sleeve before it can burn all the way through and sticks his tongue out, the piercing glittering in the morning sun.

“Alright, fine.  Your highness, what do you think?” He bows extravagantly.

Vegeta scowls and folds his arms.

“I think…” His scowl morphs into a smirk. “I think I call shotgun.”

Turles whips his head up. “What?  It’s my van!”

Raditz joins in, too.

“You’re the fucking shortest--you go in the back!”

He takes off to the van, with the other two in hot pursuit.  Kakarrot looks at Broly and he isn’t sure if it’s an attempt at a shared look of amusement or if that’s just how his face is.

“I like sitting in the back,” he says. “It’s like a roller coaster.”

Broly isn’t sure how to acknowledge that.  When he doesn’t answer, Kakarrot sighs.

“Look, we’ve known each other for almost twenty years.  Maybe chill with the hating me for no reason?”

Like before, he isn’t sure how to answer.  This time, though, he shrugs.  On some level, Kakarrot’s right and he never really had a  _ good _ reason for disliking him.  Then again, he’s also just kind of an irritating person.

At the van, there’s bedlam.  Nappa stands, looking amused, while the remaining three fight over the front seat.  Raditz has Vegeta around the middle as he tries to pry him from the door while Turles is trying to peel his fingers from the handle.

“Why are you this strong?” Raditz cries out, voice strained. “You survive on alcohol, coffee and cigarettes.”

“He has a low center of gravity, the little fuck!” Turles adds.

“I’m not giving up shotgun.  I write the songs, I’m the fucking singer.”

Broly turns to see that the other bands haven’t left and they’re all staring at them.

“People are looking,” he says flatly.

No one seems to be listening so Broly turns to their audience and gives a little wave.

\--

“Remember that show with the swamp vampires or whatever?” Turles asks.

He stretches his arms over his head and arches his back.  Four hours crammed in the back of the van with all of their instruments and gear is a nightmare.  If this is how the tour is going to be, he already fears for his back.

“No?” Raditz pops out behind him and draws one arm across his chest to crack his shoulder.

“Yeah,” Kakarrot says and then adds, “Swampires.”

He hops down and lands neatly on his hands like the freak little monkey acrobat he can be sometimes.

“I think this is where their bands perform.”

The building is a low bungalow with a tin roof and a wide porch.  The steps leading up to the porch are sagging from water damage and spots of the roof are rusted.

“I think there was a club on that show,” Kakarrot says.  He rolls forward into a somersault and jumps to his feet. “But we didn’t have cable so I never really saw it.”

“Hick shit,” Vegeta says, spitting on the ground.  He doesn’t look at all uncomfortable and Turles glares at him.

In his final bid for the front seat, he had bitten his hand, and Turles still has the imprint hours later.

“It’s not bad,” Nappa says. “Considering.”

Turles has to give him that.  Nappa’s been a musician and bouncer longer than any of them.  He’s only told them a few stories of rock’n’roll excess he’s seen and it makes their antics look like child’s play.

“I have my steel pedal guitar,” Broly says quietly.  He’s sitting in the open back of the band, his long legs stretched out in front of him. “If you want to play some of that stuff.”

Kakarrot widens his eyes.

“Oh, shit, we don’t have a setlist.”

Vegeta shrugs.

“We have a shitload of songs that we know go over well live so who cares?  We can make one now.”

They’re the first ones here, Turles notes, probably because Nappa ignores most traffic laws and speed limit signs.

“Should we go in or wait for the others?” Raditz asks.

“If we go in before King Kai talks to the owners, I’m pretty sure he’ll actually kill us this time,” Turles replies.

“Good point.”

He hopes no one is inside to see them awkwardly parked out front, sitting at their car.  He bums a smoke from Vegeta and they sit next to each other on the curve, chewing the ends of their cigarettes.  It’s weird, he thinks, how easily they can go back to camaraderie after fights.

“Can I have one?” Kakarrot asks. “I wanna see if I can blow smoke rings.”

“No,” Vegeta says, blowing smoke out of the side of his mouth. “You have an addictive personality and if you start smoking, Chi-Chi will kill me.”

He pouts, put out, and goes back to scribbling a setlist out in a battered spiral notebook.  Even though they all know by now that he and Chi-Chi aren’t currently together, they all fear her wrath.  Besides, them getting  _ back _ together is as inevitable and predictable as the sunrise.

A battered-looking car pulls into the parking lot next to them.  The venue doesn’t open for another few hours so Turles guesses that it’s another one of the bands.

“Is King Kai in the bus with those kids in You-Whatever?” Kakarrot asks.

“U6,” Broly corrects.

“I think so,” Raditz says.

“Then that’s not him.”

Broly doesn’t say that he could have told them that because he recognizes Tien from Kame Kami behind the wheel.  He figures that they put their stuff in the bus since the car is a tiny hatchback--no room for anything.

“Hey, Goku.”

Krillin seems to be the only one happy to see them.  No--wait.  Broly sees Yamcha glance at Raditz and a slow, easy smile spreads onto his face.  He hitches his shoulders up and looks away.  Raditz doesn’t seem to notice, though, since he’s playing keep away with Vegeta’s cigarette by holding it above his head and making him jump for it.

“I’m surprised you’re early,” Piccolo says, voice as flat and blunt as his words.

“Only to the location,” Turles says. “Good luck getting Kakarrot onstage on time.”

He turns from the weird sort of secret handshake he’s doing with Krillin and makes a face.

“It’s not my fault I have to pee every time we go onstage.”

Yamcha snorts a laugh. “Well, I’m sure there’s always a perfectly good trashcan nearby.”

Broly has a feeling the impressions they’ve made so far are going to follow them for a while.

\--

The first thing Raditz notices is that the stage is wet.  The whole place is damp and smells like a bar rag.  It’s crowded, though.  The tables and chairs have been pushed back to make way for the swarm of teens and twenty-somethings who have come to see them.  He still isn’t used to it.

“This shit’s unsafe,” Turles says, low enough so only they can hear.

He lifts his combat boot from a puddle on the stage and inches backwards.  None of them wanted to plug anything in.  They just  _ had _ to be the first ones to perform.

“It’s not that bad,” Kakarrot says sunnily.

He swings his power chord around and then plugs it into an amp.  All Raditz sees is a spark and then his brother is flying backwards in a spectacular arc.  He lands just short of his drumset and he leans over it, nervous.  The crowd stares, first at each other and then at the stage, probably wondering if it’s some kind of act.

“Kakarrot!”

Raditz all but vaults over his drumset to get to where he’s lying.  King Kai and Nappa have rushed out, too, along with a couple of the roadies that the label hired.  The others surround him, too, even Broly.

“Kakarrot, you alright?” Vegeta slaps at his face lightly and Raditz shoves him back.

Blearily, he opens his eyes.

“Stay back!” Nappa barks. “Give him space.”

Raditz can see minor electrical burns on his hands and lips as Kakarrot groggily lifts his body up.  He honestly can’t tell a difference in his hair from the shock.

“Call someone,” King Kai says to one of the surrounding crew.

Someone pulls out their cell phone while the crowd still stares.  Kakarrot looks around and blinks his eyes.

“Hey,” he croaks. “I think it’s too wet to play.”

Relieved and not sure what else to do, Raditz just shoves him.

\--

The owner falls over himself to clean the stage and make it up to them all.  King Kai is looking pretty litigious so Vegeta can’t honestly blame him for trying to cover his ass.  The paramedics treated Kakarrot and declared him fine.  They said if it wasn’t for the rubber soles of his sneakers, things would have been a lot worse.  Vegeta thinks it’s horseshit.  Rubber or no rubber, Kakarrot is the most resilient person he knows.

It’s two hours before they can go on again and he’s surprised that the crowd hasn’t thinned out.

“You alright?” Someone cries.

Kakarrot grins and gives a thumbs up and cheers erupt all around them.

“Hey, Geta.”

He glares at him.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

He sighs. “You’re going to make a joke that this is a ‘shocking’ first show and I’m going to have to kill you and God already tried and failed to do that tonight.”

His grin widens and Vegeta wonders if it hurts him considering the burns on them.

“You know me too well.”

“Unfortunately.”

Kakarrot leans in and punches him lightly on the shoulder.

“You ready?”

He nods and turns back to signal to Raditz.  He marks time with his sticks, holding them up above his head.  On his cue, they all begin to play the hastily agreed upon setlist taped in front of them.  Maybe it’s because they had to wait or they’re simply glad they didn’t witness a man die that night but the crowd immediately goes wild.  The music feels like it’s ripping its way out of him, everything sizzles--it could be the remaining dampness minorly shocking him but he ignores it--as he and Kakarrot cram their faces together and sing into the same microphone.

They segue into the song he reworked that Raditz wrote years ago and he can pretend that since he didn’t write it that it’s not about his feelings for Bulma and the breakup.

The crowd throws it back at them.  What he can see is thrashing bodies and, every so often, hands reaching up on the lip of the stage to grab at his and Kakarrot’s legs.

After the show, his throat is raw and people are screaming for an encore.

“Fuck off,” he snarls into the mic. “Three other bands still have to perform.”

For some reason, they love it and the yelling intensifies.  It’s weird, he thinks, having people react positively to what teachers, guidance counselors, and the therapist his dad sent him to referred to as his “abrasive, standoff-ish personality.”

Their gear is moved a lot more swiftly with more people than just them and Nappa getting it offstage.  The guys from Kame Kami stand off to the side and watch them as they pass.  Yamcha is very clearly checking out Raditz’s ass and it makes Vegeta roll his eyes.

“You sure know how to start a show,” Krillin says. “You alright, Goku?”

He makes a V-sign with one hand. “Five by five.”

“I don’t think that’s what that means,” Tien says, lifting his lip in scorn.

“He likes Buffy,” Raditz explains. “Uh, have a good show.”

Turles passes them and smacks Yamcha on the shoulder.

“Yeah, break a leg.” Under his breath, Vegeta hears him mutter, “Or two.”

He arches his brow but doesn’t say anything.  He missed if Yamcha did anything to piss their bassist off but figures that the venom is probably because every time they’re in the same room, he stares at Raditz like he’s an ice cream sundae on a hot day.  Turles would never admit it but he probably still holds out a small hope that they’ll get back together.  Vegeta thinks it’s annoying.  Five years is a long enough time to get the fuck over it.  For both of them.

Focusing on their problems, though, are easier than focusing on his own, which he’s been avoiding.  This is the first full day he’s spent sober since The Fight and he hates it.

“Can this place comp us drinks because they almost killed you?”

Kakarrot grins. “I hope so!”


	7. The Dream That Comes Alive at Night

It’s easy to lose track on the road.  Cities and shows blur together into something that, in a movie, would only be worthy of a montage.  Other than shows, they’re mostly on their own.  For Raditz, it’s getting to be a bit much.  It reminds him of when their parents would take them on vacation and he’d be crammed in the back with Kakarrot, whose inability to sit still would be intensified tenfold.

It’s on a larger scale, though, with all of them.  It’s a relief when they get to a show and get let out their tension onstage.  The fights they do have are petty and never last.  It’s usually over what station to listen to or who gets the front seat.  They’re still at their best right after a show, grinning and giddy and not wanting to punch each other in the face.

Tonight, all of them are being put up in a hotel.  A hotel-hotel, not a seedy motel that looks like something from one of the gorefest movies Kakarrot likes.  It’s been two weeks since the electrocution incident and it feels like they’ve been going nonstop.  This is their first break.  Raditz fears for the employees of this Best Western.

“It’s like a college dorm,” Lazuli from Sadistic Dance says flatly.

Her mouth twitches in distaste, but Raditz reckons that it’s an apt interpretation.  Not like he’s been to college, but he’s seen movies.

“I don’t want a property damage bill tomorrow.” For some reason, King Kai is looking at all of them when he says it.

In their defense, it isn’t _just_ them.  Everyone looks restless.  King Kai leaves them in the parking lot with their room keys and no one moves just yet.  The awkward silence is broken up by Kakarrot’s ringtone.  He pulls his phone from his pocket and widens his eyes at whatever name has come up on the display.

“Chi-Chi?” He pauses and then frowns. “Gohan?...You called me on mommy’s phone?...Does mommy know you _have_ her phone?”

He puts one hand on his other ear and walks in the double doors to the lobby.

“Is that your little brother?”

Raditz hadn’t heard Yamcha come up behind him.

“Who?” He can’t mean Kakarrot, can he?  Everyone has to know they’re related by now.

“On the phone--you have another little brother?”

“No?” He furrows his brow. “Wait, you mean Gohan?”

Yamcha shrugs. “I guess?”

“That’s his son.”

Krillin has apparently overheard and he gapes at him.

“Goku has a _kid?”_

He nods. “Yeah.”

Yamcha lets out a low whistle and then shakes his head.

“So, Raditz, wanna come by our room?”

It’s a blatant come on but he doesn’t care.  Yamcha’s been checking him out for the entire duration of the tour and it’s been--flattering.

“Sure.”

\--

Kakarrot gets off the phone with Gohan after telling him good night and reminding him that he can’t just take Chi-Chi’s phone without asking.  Gohan isn’t even in preschool yet and he’s already this smart.  He’s proud but also a little wary.  The smarter he gets, the sooner he’ll realize that his dad’s a fuck-up and he kind of likes being cool in his eyes.

“Hey, Goku.”

He smiles when he hears the nickname.  He didn’t realize how much he missed being called that until he saw Krillin again.  When he had moved away, he’d been left basically friendless except his brother and Turles, who were two grades ahead of him and already at the middle school.  He had heard of Kame Kami but he had no idea that his childhood best friend was in it.

“Hey.”

Krillin comes to sit next to him where he’s crouched in the lobby.  He figures he should go to their room soon but right now he’s too comfortable.  It’s the first time they arrived in a town the night before the show and he isn’t sure what to do with himself.

“So, that was your son?”

“Yeah.” He turns his phone on to show him his lock screen. “That’s Gohan.  He’s four.”

Krillin smiles at the picture. “He’s adorable.”

He doesn’t bring up the age he had to have been when Gohan was born and he’s glad.  He and Chi-Chi have gotten enough shit and he’s seen his parents get the same treatment.  His mom told him once when she was pregnant with him and bagging groceries at work, his dad had brought Raditz in for a surprise visit and an old lady had berated her to her face for being pregnant at seventeen and already having a kid.

Krillin runs his fingers through his hair, which still catches him off-guard.  When they were kids, he used to shave it and whenever he’d think of him sporadically over the years, he pictured him remaining bald.

“So what do you think of Lazuli?”

Kakarrot frowns.  That seems out of nowhere.

“The girl from Sadistic Dance?” He shrugs. “I dunno.  Most of the other bands don’t...talk to us.”

“Oh.” He looks down. “I just...think she’s kinda cool.”

“I like their music,” he says to have something to put in. “It’s really different.”

Usually Sadistic Dance is on them and Kakarrot can’t really pay attention because his mind is zooming in five hundred different directions at a hundred miles an hour.  But what he _has heard_ is terrifically cool.  Their lyrics are dark and their music is a mix of digital synthesizers and pulsing drums.

“Yeah, that too…” He clears his throat awkwardly. “So, uh, are you married?”

It’s an obvious subject change and Krillin has no idea of what a sore spot he’s hit.  Kakarrot bites his lip.

“Not...exactly.” He rubs the back of his neck with one hand. “Me and Chi-Chi--that’s Gohan’s mom--are kinda on a break right now.  But she’s my girlfriend...most of the time.”

“Oh. Uh...sorry I asked.”

They sit in that sort of awkward silence that comes with not having seen someone for fifteen years and not having a clue what to say.

“You wanna go find some beer or something?” Krillin asks.

He exhales in relief.

“God, yes.”

\--

It’s not really a party with only two people but he’s too drunk to really care.  Turles has hauled in the dusty, scuffed boombox from the depths of the van and put in one of his many Billy Joel cassettes.  The room is much bigger with just the two of them.  Raditz is off fucking the guitarist from Kame Kami--and thank God because the hot-eyed stares were getting on Vegeta’s nerves.  He can never understand why people can’t just piss or get off the pot when they want to hook up with someone.  Broly’s gone off somewhere by himself and Kakarrot is probably still on the phone with Gohan.

He’s never considered Billy Joel as music that you would blast but Turles is super intense about the piano man, especially when he’s sloshed.

“Darlin’ I don’t know why IIIIII go to extreeemes!”

His voice isn’t actually bad but he seems to be making it sound that way.  He swings around a bottle of Sprite he’s mixed with vodka and Skittles.  Vegeta’s teeth hurt just looking at it.  He prefers the burn of straight alcohol.  More than the booze, he finds himself focusing on the hand holding the bottle or, more importantly, the tattoo scratched onto it.

“Turles...oi...Turles.”

He smacks his arm and shouts to be heard over the music.

“EITHER I STAAAAAND OR I FAAAAAALL!  It’s all or nothin’ at AAAAALLL!”

“TURLES!”

He stamps his foot impatiently.  He hates when people don’t answer him immediately and it’s intensified when he’s drunk.  His cry gets Turles to actually turn the music down.

“What?”

“I want one.”

He points at his hand.

“I thought you hated sweet shit.”

He shakes his head and, wow, his entire body feels like a cocktail shaker.

“No, no.  That.  A tattoo.  Can you give me one?”

Turles’s blurred out eyes light up. “Oh, fuck yeah!”

That’s how they end up in the bathroom with ink, a makeshift needle, and a lighter.  Vegeta isn’t sure where Turles got the ink but he’s long since learned to stop questioning these things.  Billy Joel still sings on outside but it’s muffled by the door and walls.  The entire situation feels slightly surreal.  He shrugs his jacket off and rolls up the sleeve of his t-shirt.

“Here.” He gestures to the arc of his shoulder.

A memory cuts through his drunken haze.  Bulma tracing her finger over his arm and saying he should be a proper punk rocker with tattoos.  “Get my name in a heart,” she’d said and then laughed. “No, I’m kidding.”  He shakes his head again and everything rattles around inside.

“I wanna crown,” he slurs out. “‘Cause I’m a prince.  Get it?  Prince?  That’s my last name.”

Turles puts a finger on his lips and Vegeta fights the urge to bite it.

“Shh--shh.  I know what you really want so shut up.”

He feels put out but the feeling fades and he lets Turles do what he pleases to his arm.  It _hurts_ and he hisses between sips of Svedka from the bottle.

“There,” he says finally. “My masterpiece.”

His arm is burning and stinging at once and it’s _itchy._  Is it supposed to be immediately itchy?  He cranes his neck down to look at it.

“Turles, you fuck!”

He drew a crown--a lopsided, little three-pointed thing--but above it in an arc in surprisingly smooth, legible letters is “Bulma.”

“It’s what you really wanted,” he tells him very seriously.

“Bullshit.”

“That’s why you’ve been in a drunken haze since she dumped you.  Don’t fuck with me, Veggie.  I’ve known your ass since you were thirteen.”

“Fuck you.”

It’s all he has because his arm really fucking hurts and he’s too drunk to do much else.

\--

It’s been a long time since Raditz has made out with someone.  Hell, Broly’s rushed, closed-mouth kiss on the roof was the first time he’d even been _kissed_ period in some time.

Yamcha wastes no time.  He’s already tugging at the hem of his t-shirt.  Because of this, there’s very little foreplay.  Raditz doesn’t mind it.  It’s been so long, his body is reacting almost immediately to Yamcha’s fingers, to his mouth.

Afterwards, he rolls off of him and collapses in a boneless, sweaty heap.  Yamcha tips his head back and lifts his hair off of the back of his neck.  That had been an issue for them both.  Between the combined amount of hair they both had, Raditz kept pulling _someone’s_ whenever he tried to maneuver himself on the bed.

“That was good,” he says, breathless. “You’re surprisingly gentle for someone so big.”

He isn’t sure what else to say and, honestly, he doesn’t trust his voice yet so he just flexes a bicep at him.  They lie together for a moment, soaking in the afterglow.  He hates that it reminds him of him and Turles, back when things were good.  They would lie together afterwards and he’d tease Raditz and tug on his hair.  Shit, he needs to get over this.  Five years is long enough but it--he curses himself and ignores it.  Now is not the time.

After what seems like too soon, he has to do away with the condom and Yamcha hops up to wipe himself down.

“So...what now?” he asks as he dumps it into the trashcan.

He shrugs. “I figure things go back to the way they were.  I...okay, I don’t know how to say this without coming off like a douche.”

That’s never good.  Yamcha fusses with the monroe piercing near the corner of his mouth, a frown creasing his face.

“So...I’m kinda...trying to get over my ex.  I kinda just wanted a fling and you’re really hot and into dudes so…”

That...is not that bad.  Truthfully, outside the physical, he doesn’t feel much else for Yamcha.  He seems like a nice person and is a good time from their limited interaction but it doesn’t go beyond that.

“Sure.”

He takes in a deep breath and then smiles. “Okay, cool.  Like, I like you but I’m not...looking...for anything.”

“Me neither.”

And he isn’t, not really.  Raditz isn’t sure what he wants but it isn’t to jump into a relationship in the middle of the tour.  They already have way too much going on for him to even conceive of such a thing.  He puts his clothes back on and Yamcha high fives him.

“You were really good, though,” he says. “Very cathartic.  I was like ‘Tien who?’”

“Your ex is Tien?”

He conjures an image of Kame Kami’s bassist in his mind.  He’s always looking at him and the rest of his bandmates like he found them on the bottom of his shoe.  Raditz never says it to his face but he oozes a lot of scorn for a dude in a Coldplay-esque knit hat who dresses like Art Garfunkel.

“Yeah.  Inter-band relationships, huh?  I do not recommend them.”

Raditz stares at him for a moment, not sure how to react to something so relevant to his own life, before bursting into loud, fake laughter.  Yamcha frowns and cocks a brow.

“You okay?”

“Five by five.” He makes an okay-sign with his hand. “I’m gonna.  Uh.  Go.  Thanks for the sex.”

He leaves, cursing his inability to not stick his foot in his mouth.

“Uh...you’re welcome?”

Again, he’s glad that Yamcha seems just as bad at it and he quickly makes his escape.  He makes it maybe ten feet before someone speaks to him.

“Walk of shame?”

He nearly jumps out of his skin and he turns to see Lapis sitting cross-legged on the hideously patterned carpet of the hallway.

“No.  It’s just a walk.  A post-sex walk.”

He turns his hand out and a half-smile plays on his lips.

“Why are you sitting on the floor?”

Lapis points to the door behind him.

“My sister has our room key and she’s currently...somewhere.  And 16’s asleep in there.  So I’m locked out.”

Raditz isn’t sure why they call their drummer 16 but he’s never asked.  Sadistic Dance, like most everyone else, avoids them.  Being in a group tour hasn’t been much different than just playing with each other except now the people who judge them for their behavior have to look at them again the next day.

“Go for a walk with me?”

“Uh.  Sure.”

He still smells like Yamcha’s body spray and he’s sweaty but Lapis doesn’t make a comment on it.  Outside, he can hear the sounds of traffic and neon spires of fast food and gas stations shoot up into the sky.  Raditz tips his face up and looks at the stars.

“Y’know most of them are dead,” he says.

“Most of what?”

“The stars.  The light just hasn’t reached us yet.”

Lapis looks up with him and doesn’t speak for a moment. “Hmmm.  I suppose you’re right.  It’s kind of sad.”

He says it in the same, archy way he says almost everything so Raditz isn’t sure if he’s being sincere or not.

“I saw an all-night burrito place when we pulled in.” Lapis drops his head and his straight, shiny hair falls to obscure his face. “Do you want to go?”

“Sure.”

He doesn’t know what else to say.  Everything feels kind of surreal, like he’s not really there.  Again, he finds himself zoning out and focusing on parts of things.  The twinkle of the lights on Lapis’s earrings and the acerbic curve of his mouth.  The thin, smooth column of his neck and where his collarbones poke up from his shirt.  Raditz blinks.

“I’m hungry,” he says, which is true enough.

If they even make anything on this tour, he’s sure they’ll just break even with the amount of food they go through.  Lapis laughs but it seems to be with him rather than at him.

“You know, I thought everyone else hated us,” Raditz says as they begin to walk across the parking lot. “What gives?”

“I’m not everyone,” he says simply. “You all are...interesting.  So I wanted to get to know you better.”

They walk in silence for a bit and he thinks Lapis probably appreciates it.  He seems like someone who doesn’t like small talk.

“I’ve finally heard your music.”

“Oh?” He arches his eyebrows. “And?”

“It’s really different but.  Cool.  Like darkly futuristic?” He tries to think of more, better words. “Your lyrics are really interesting.”

They’re dismal is what they are but he doesn’t say that.  He doesn’t mind it, though.  Lapis actually looks a bit embarrassed, like he didn’t expect Raditz to say what he did.

“Ah.” He pauses. “I like that one song you all have.  About waking up on the kitchen floor.”

He nods.  It’s one of their most crowd-pleasing songs.

“The drums are good in it.”

They jay-walk across a dark, deserted street to the parking lot of a lit-up building.  A few cars, probably belonging to the employees, litter the lot.

“No offense, though, but 16 is the best drummer on the tour.”

Raditz furrows his brow in confusion. “How would I not be offended by that?”

Lapis laughs again. “I guess you’re right.”

“Why do you call him 16?”

They push open the doors at the same time and the smell of beef and cheese hits him, making his mouth water and making him almost forget what he asked.

“Honestly, I don’t remember.” Lapis tips his head to the side again and he does that fairly frequently.  It’s kind of cute. “Do you have a nickname?”

“My parents call me Radi.”

Turles does, too, but he doesn’t mention that.

“I think I prefer calling you Raditz.” He pauses as they near the counter and turns, a slight smirk on his face. “Raditz and Lapis.  It almost rhymes.”

“Almost,” he agrees. “Enough to count for a song.”

He nods.  They place their orders and while they wait, the strangeness of the entire night hits him.  He went to bed with one guy and now is sitting in a fluorescently lit building with another one, waiting to eat burritos.  He sways on his feet a bit and sits down.

“You should go to bed after this,” he says, sitting across from him.  Lapis props his chin in his hands and gives him a knowing look. “I’m sure my sister’s back by now.”

“Y-yeah.  It’s not that.  It’s.” He’s worn out from the sex, but it’s more than that, too. “Uh.  The lights.”

It sounds pathetic when it comes out, that he’s overstimulated by the restaurant.

“Ah.  Then let’s get our burritos to go.”

The order comes up: one, regular-sized burrito and one the size of a blimp.  They eat outside, sitting on the curb.  When he finishes, Lapis tosses his balled up aluminum foil at him.  Raditz pauses mid-bite and glares at him.  He’s smiling in that way again, like he has a secret.  Even so, he waits until Raditz finishes to speak.

“Let’s go.”

The walk back to the hotel is too short and he and Lapis go their separate ways.  He still feels weird as he lets himself back into their room.  He’s surprised to see the others are in bed.  Turles and Vegeta are sprawled over one bed, limbs tangling and sheets twisted around them.  Kakarrot’s curled up in the other bed, not spread eagle for once.  Raditz slips out of his jeans and crawls under the sheets.  He has to tug some out from under Kakarrot’s body to properly cover himself.  The night didn’t really end like he wanted but he’s not upset about it.  The last thing he thinks about before drifting off to sleep is that little secretive smile aimed at him.

\--

Broly wanders the halls, unable to sleep.  He didn’t want to party with Turles and Vegeta so he started walking.  Now he’s been circling the hotel for hours and he’s certain that some other guest is going to call the front desk to report a threatening person.

He rounds a corner that he knows now is the hallway that houses the ice machine.  To his surprise, he isn’t alone.  One of the girls from U6 stands at the ice machine, holding a bucket.  He knows he should just walk by but something about her seems...familiar.  It isn’t that he knows her but he does.  He can’t quite place it.

“Do you know how to work this?” she asks quietly as he passes.

Broly stops and admits, “No.”

It’s a different ice machine than the one that had been next to the motel room he stayed in after he left home.  He still remembers someone busting in and thinking it was his dad.  It had been Turles, saying he wasn’t going to let him pay for a place and that he could stay with him and Raditz.

“I like your pajama pants,” he says.

She looks down at her Pikachu print pajama pants. “Thanks.  I really like Pokemon.”

“Me too.”

She chances a slight smile and hugs the empty ice bucket to her chest.

“I’m Kale.” She pauses. “And you’re Broly.  From Apetail.  We went to one of your shows for my eighteenth birthday a couple months ago.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Wow, she’s young.  Broly feels protective of her all of a sudden and he isn’t used to such an intense emotion.  He was always afraid to show too much emotion or else his dad would somehow convince him it was bad.

“Our guitarist, Cabba, is obsessed with your lead singer.” Another pause. “The short one.  With the hair?”

He nods.  Tries to think of something to say.

“I brought my DS,” he says finally. “If you ever want to link up and battle or something.  Pokemon.”

“I’d like that.” She lowers her head and turns to look back at the ice machine. “Can you help me figure this out?”

He isn’t going to be getting any sleep tonight so he just shrugs.  He takes a step closer and looks at it.  There isn’t a simple button but a dial.  Broly reaches forward and cranks it.  The machine rumbles and ice shoots out at them both.  He and Kale both duck as the ice hits the wall behind them.

“Cut our losses?” he asks.

She nods and they take off down the hall.


	8. A Flash of Pain Spells Your Name on My Message Machine

They’re woken up by the slamming of the hotel room door.  Raditz cracks an eye open in time to see Nappa dumping an armload of clothes on the floor.

“Your laundry,” he says gruffly.

“Aw, you did our laundry?” Turles sits up and ruffles his hair. “Thanks, dad.”

Sunlight streams in through the window, but he has no idea of what time it is.  Time is weird.  There’s times they have to be onstage and times when King Kai wants them to “do press” with indie music bloggers but other than that, they have zero concept of time.

Nappa grunts. “It wasn’t a favor to any of you.  Your clothes were all getting fucking  _ ripe.” _

Raditz sits up all the way and yawns. “It’s not that bad.”

Nappa levels him with a look and he ducks his head in embarrassment.

“Come down to breakfast when you’re done sorting out whose shit is whose.”

“It’s still breakfast time?” Broly lifts his head up and blearily rubs his eyes.

Nappa shrugs.

“Depends on your perspective.”

With that, he leaves.  It’s easy enough for Raditz and Kakarrot to untangle themselves from the sheets but the other bed has three people in it and Broly’s gangly legs purportedly get everywhere when they’re trying to sleep.

“Whose Talking Heads shirt is this?” Raditz asks.

“Mine.”

It’s probably the first day in months that Vegeta isn’t hungover--or still drunk.  Turles begins sorting through the pile, shoving shirts out of the way.

“Why are there so many shirts?” Broly asks, yawning.

“We’re five people,” Kakarrot points out. “Ooh, there’s one of mine.”

“Really, dude?” Turles asks, quirking a brow, “because someone else would have a shirt from eighties cult classic  _ Happy Birthday to Me. _  Thanks for clearing that up, Kakarrot.”

He grabs an armful of flannels and shoves them towards Broly who mouths “thank you.”  Turles scoops up another shirt and begins to put it into his pile but Raditz stops him.

“That’s my Social Distortion shirt,” he says.

Turles makes a face. “No, it’s mine.”

He grabs the end of the shirt. “It’s mine.”

“It’s mine.”

Vegeta yawns and says, “Who cares?  Social Distortion sucks.”

He grabs a pair of boxer briefs and adds them to his pile of clothes.

“They do not,” he and Turles shout at the same time.

“Whatever.  You both just ‘like’ them to have more punk cred.  We all know that Raditz’s favorite band is The Eagles and Turles sucks Billy Joel’s dick.”

Turles chucks a shirt at him and Vegeta lunges forward to punch him in the shoulder.  Raditz, despite having his credentials questioned and his taste in music insulted, he leans forward and pries them apart.  Tensions have been mounting lately, with little arguments like this turning physical.  They’ve been in close quarters for too long as the tour goes on and tensions are constantly at a breaking point.  To make matters worse, Vegeta has progressed beyond his “drink yourself into a stupor every night” stage of mourning and segued into “lash out at everyone verbally or physically” and it’s getting  _ old. _

“Kakarrot, this is one of yours,” Broly says, quietly handing over a  _ Nightmare on Elm Street _ shirt.

Raditz shudders.  Things are bad if Broly’s keeping the peace with his brother.  Or, maybe, he’s getting over his weird, unexplained dislike for Kakarrot.

“This is yours.”

Broly shoves a shirt advertising Roswell that Raditz got at the charity shop at him.  If he’s getting over his dislike for Kakarrot, he’s  _ still _ mad at him over that scene on the roof.

“Thanks,” he says, but Broly just responds with a shrug.

Somehow they manage to divvy up their laundry without any further altercations and stumble down into the lobby.

“So you’re all alive.”

Turles jumps. “Jesus!  How long have you been standing there?”

King Kai adjusts his little glasses. “Long enough.  We’re all waiting for you.”

“Why?” Vegeta asks, scowling and crossing his arms.

“We’re having a big, communal lunch and taking pictures.  The label wants this for publicity, to show you all getting along.”

“Literally everyone else hates us,” Kakarrot points out.

It isn’t  _ entirely _ true.  Raditz is certain that Yamcha liked him quite a bit, at least for a few hours, and Krillin likes Kakarrot--and that skinny kid from U6 is always a second away from following Vegeta around like a puppy.  He tries not to think of Lapis.  In the past few weeks, he had become his late night buddy of sorts.  Sometimes, after a show, he’ll come and grab him and they’ll go get fast food or ice cream and then they’ll go to Lapis’s room where he’ll make him watch David Lynch movies.  He isn’t sure why he likes him or if he truly does.  Sometimes he feels like he’s one, big experiment on Lapis’s part and the thought annoys him more than it should.

“No one hates you.  They just don’t like you.”

“Oh, is that all?” Turles says, wide-eyed.

King Kai sighs and gestures towards the door.

“Just get in the damn van.”

\--

It’s annoying, Vegeta thinks, having a photographer hover around them when they’re trying to eat.  They’re all mixed up, too, in a forced, fake way and he’s sandwiched between the guitarist from U6 and Piccolo from Kame Kami.

“I’ve seen you live five times,” the kid is telling him.  And what’s name?  Cabba?  Tabba? “That thing you and Kakarrot do?  It’s amazing--what is it?”

Kakarrot has apparently overheard and he lifts his head, cheeks chipmunked by the amount of food he’s crammed in them.

“Guitar fusion,” he says, mouth full.

“Asshole, it’s called weaving.” He turns to the kid’s eager face and repeats, “Guitar weaving.”

“That’s so cool.”

He realizes that Cabba (?) is wearing a denim jacket that looks reminiscent of his own when he first bought it.  It has different pins and patches, though, and he notices that one of the pins is for Apetail.  He even has his right ear pierced, too, and, judging from the redness around the earring, it looks recent.  Vegeta can’t help but be weirdly flattered.

“Well...Cab...ba,” he tries and the kid beams so at least that’s his name. “Uh, thanks.”

“Could you show me something some time?” he asks. “You’re why I wanted to be a guitarist!”

“Seriously?”

He blushes and rolls his lips in as he looks down at his plate.

“Well, uh, you and Green Day.”

That makes a lot more sense, but that he’s inspired anyone confounds him.  He’s always been aware of his own abilities but seeing someone confirm them to his face is another matter entirely.

“So can you?  Show me some stuff some time, I mean.”

Cabba’s eagerness reminds him of his brother, Tarble.  He was always tailing after him, trying to be like him.  Tarble...when was the last time he even called to check up on him?  Bulma had convinced him to, once, but that was months ago.  She could convince him of anything except opening up and not being a dick.  He doesn’t know  _ why _ he’s still dwelling on it--dwelling on her--but he can’t stop.

“Yeah, sure.”

Cabba seems pleased and goes back to eating his lunch.

\--

On some level, they should have seen it coming.  Tensions have been mounting between them all for some time.  Petty squabbles and minor physical altercations that are quickly broken up.  They actually have time for a sound check before the show and things quickly get ugly.

“That’s shit, that’s shit, this is crap, this is garbage.”

Kakarrot sighs.  Raditz knows his brother and knows that even his laidback nature is getting pushed.

“So every song I write is crap and everything you write is brilliant?”

Vegeta shrugs and smirks. “Better, not brilliant.”

He’s projecting again but no one wants to call him out on it.  He’s been blowing up at everyone far too frequently and saying so will only set him off further.

“Just one hit to the mouth,” Turles says, making a fist. “That’ll shut him up.”

“That’ll just make him angrier,” Broly points out.

“Yeah, well, yelling and arguing isn’t helping.  It’s like being in a band with my parents before they got divorced.”

Onstage, it’s worse.  They’re halfway through the set and Raditz hears it.  He sees it, too, his brother’s finger hit the wrong note and it seems to jangle through the entire venue.  Kakarrot smiles in that sheepish way of his and plays on.  Vegeta doesn’t seem to share his sentiment.

“What the fuck?” he demands.

It probably doesn’t help that Kakarrot was five minutes late to set because he was going to the bathroom.  Raditz catches Turles’s eye and they both shrug.  He thinks things have been better with him, at least.  They’re reaching a point where they can push the old bullshit aside and just be friends.  Broly, though, still refuses to meet his eye.

“Sorry, sorry.”

They’re somehow both still playing and awkwardly pick the song back up.  Raditz sighs and goes back to playing.  He needs to get in the mood to get as wild as he normally does.  From his seat, though, he can still see the tension between their two frontmen.  Kakarrot’s lackadaisical attitude combined with Vegeta constantly being on the edge of losing it are not a good combination.

He isn’t sure what prompts it.  He thinks maybe Kakarrot messed up again but, if he did, his ears didn’t catch it.  Whatever it is, it makes Vegeta lash out and punch him.  At the last second, Kakarrot lifts his guitar to protect his midsection but the punch still connects.  He hears the splinter of fiberglass and his fist disappears into the guitar.  Strings snap and the sound fizzles out.  Kakarrot doubles over for a moment but moreso out of shock than pain.  Raditz turns to see Turles staring open-mouthed, apparently at a loss for words for once.

“Did he...punch him  _ through _ the guitar?” Broly asks quietly.

Vegeta seems shocked as well as he pulls his bloodied fist out of the hole he made in Kakarrot’s guitar.  The crowd is mostly silent but Raditz can hear murmurs rippling through it.  They’re probably wondering if this is on purpose.

Raditz turns and sees King Kai gesturing wildly to Nappa and back at them.  Sadistic Dance is the next band out and he spots them waiting in the wings.  Lapis catches his eye and widens his own.  For some reason, it almost makes him laugh.

Nappa breaks the stunned silence by walking out and grabbing Vegeta roughly by his shoulder.

“Give him your guitar to finish the set.  You’re going to Urgent Care.”

He tugs the guitar off of him and hands it to Kakarrot who exchanges it for his ruined one.  Nappa leaves and the four of them are left onstage with half the set to go.  Kakarrot stares, wide-eyed at the crowd.

“Uh...so.  That happened.”

Nervous laughter titters through the crowd.  He looks back over his shoulder and Raditz shrugs.

“Just go with it,” he says quietly.

“Right, right.”

He taps out the intro on the drums and they lurch into playing the rest of their set.  As he turns to hit a cymbal, he notices Lapis still looking at him.  When he notices that Raditz is looking at him, he gives him a little round of applause and a wink.

\--

His hand sits uselessly in his lap and Vegeta can’t help but be grateful that he’s ambidextrous.  It’s his right hand, too, and he’s always leaned more on his left.  He doesn’t know  _ why _ he did it.  Kakarrot was annoying him but he annoys him all the time.  Hell, he’s been annoying him since middle school, but he’s still his best friend--like it or not.  He just reacted.  Just like with Zarbon way back when except now he has even less of a reason for lashing out.

Nappa zooms through a light as it turns red and the van lurches at the sudden influx of speed.  They’re putting so many miles on it, he’s become convinced that Turles’s treasured van is going to go some time before the tour is over.

“You have to figure your shit out,” he says.

“Gee, thanks.”

He tries to flex his fingers and hisses in pain.  He hopes he doesn’t need stitches, fuck.

“Seriously.  You either need to get over her or under her.”

“Please stop talking, Nappa.”

It isn’t that easy.  Now, it’s as if too much time has passed and if he contacts her now, she’s just going to tell him to fuck off.

“Honestly, the two of you...it’s meant to be, kid.”

“Oh, is it?” he scoffs. “We didn’t have anything official and--”

“Don’t matter.  I know what I saw.  It’s like when Johnny saw June or when Elvis saw Priscilla.  Or, hell, Kakarrot and his girl.  You’re soul mates.”

He nearly gags from the cheesiness of that statement.

“I don’t believe in that shit.”

Soul mates?  What even are they to each other?  So they were together for seven months?  So he’s been a fucking wreck since she broke up with him?  It means absolutely fucking nothing in the grand scheme of things.  It’s sickening.  His mom used to say that about his dad.  And where are they now?  She’s dead and he’s an asshole.  He tries to make a fist again and his fingers don’t cooperate.

_ Well, fuck. _

The Urgent Care is deserted enough that he doesn’t have to wait too long.  He doesn’t need stitches but his hand is bandaged up like a boxer’s.

“Hope you can still strum with that,” Nappa says when they’re getting back in the van.

He sneers at him.

“I’ll manage.”

\--

It’s no surprise that the next day, King Kai makes them gather in the crappy little diner next to the hotel when everyone else has already left for the next stop on the tour.  He says that they have to “clear the air” but Broly’s pretty certain that they’re out of Glade Plug-Ins.

He isn’t helping matters, still being all wound up about how he kissed Raditz.  It’s mostly embarrassment at this point but he’s also disliked Kakarrot for twenty years because he brought donut holes to class so he doesn’t know how to let go of a grudge.

He sits across from them with the five of them crowded on the other side of the round table.

“We don’t need this shit,” Vegeta says. “Look.  Kakarrot, I’m sorry I punched you in the guitar.  See?”

He sounds about as sincere as someone who routinely chokes on the words “I’m sorry” can but King Kai isn’t buying it.

“Listen--”

“I mean, I forgive you,” Kakarrot says, cutting him off. “I’m just worried about you.”

He makes a scoffing noise and gestures away with his bandaged hand.  To Broly, it looks pretty gnarly, but Vegeta doesn’t seem too bothered by it.  He’s already confirmed that he can still play.  It’s a bit messier, a bit clumsier, but he can still hold a pick.

“Don’t be.  I’m five by five.”

No one believes him and King Kai is growing visibly angrier at being ignored.

“Just.  Just get it together.  Please?” he begs. “We have eight more cities.”

Turles salutes him and their manager sighs.  Broly feels bad.  Despite it all, King Kai does always seem to have their best interests at heart.  They’ve honestly lucked out when it comes to managers.

“We’ll try,” he says flatly.

Even as he says it and even as he feels sympathy for their manager, he avoids Raditz’s gaze as he says it.

\--

Raditz doesn’t understand what’s going on.  He knows where he is: he’s sitting on Lapis’s bed, but he has no idea what he’s looking at.  They’re watching Twin Peaks and he should be used to this weirdness from the parade of Lynch movies he’s watched at the behest of his new friend but the show keeps it at a steady clip.

They aren’t alone.  16 is on the other bed, but Lazuli is nowhere to be seen.

“I think she likes one of the guys in Kame Kami,” he tells him. “The short one?  She says he makes her laugh.”

He doesn’t sound upset about it but there’s a measure of worry in his voice that he tries to hide under his usual flat tones.

“Cool.”

For simplicity’s sake, he’s glad that the one she likes in Kame Kami isn’t Yamcha.  They sit and watch the show in silence because, honestly, trying to figure out what’s happening takes all of Raditz’s concentration.  16, as usual, is silent and stoic on the bed.  Outside, an owl hoots and he looks up.

“Go for it,” Lapis says. “We’re fine on our own.”

“Thank you.”

16 grabs his phone from the nightstand and leaves the room.  Raditz watches him leave and quirks a brow.

“What’s that about?”

“Bird-watching,” Lapis explains. “16 loves birds.  We actually met in one of my environmental studies classes in college.”

“You studied environmental, uh, studies?”

Lapis’s lips curve up slightly at the edges.  He makes that face at him quite often, Raditz has realized.  It’s an endeared face, though, like he’s amused but not in a mocking way.

“I have a degree in it,” he says, “but then music ‘stardom’ called and here I am.”

“I’m glad you are.”

He doesn’t mean for it to sound flirtatious but Lapis actually looks away, a bit bashful.  Raditz clears his throat and concentrates back on the screen.  After looking away fro thirty seconds, he now has lost all track of what’s happening.

“Have you ever had a haircut?”

Lapis is trying to push past it and he’s glad.  He isn’t sure on his feelings for him yet and he doesn’t want to ruin what’s probably his first friendship in years.

“No--not really.” He tugs on a strand of his hair. “When I was little, I guess I was afraid of scissors or something?  Every time my mom would try and cut it, I’d run away and so she eventually just gave up.”

He lifts his hair off of the back of his neck and draws it over one shoulder.  His hair is thick and tough to comb.  Lapis’s hair is smooth and shiny and looks soft to the touch.

“I dye mine,” he says.

“I wondered which one of you had the natural hair color.” He laughs a little and Lapis makes an annoyed face.  It isn’t often he doesn’t look mildly bemused or cool and calm so the little scrunched up face catches him off guard.

“I’ve been doing it since I was fourteen.” He fingers a strand of his hair and regards it. “I wanted to look different from my sister, which is hard when you’re identical.”

Raditz isn’t sure what he means by that--identical?

“It looks good,” he says, unsure of what else to say.

“Thank you.”

There’s a beat of silence and Raditz realizes that it’s a  _ charged _ silence.  There’s a buzz in the air that wasn’t there before and he and Lapis have both realized it.  He swallows, suddenly nervous, and Lapis is looking at him intensely.  He thinks he might kiss him and he has no idea what he would do if he did.

The door opens, shattering whatever moment was about to happen between them, and Raditz springs away from him.  He misjudges the amount of space on the mattress and tumbles into the space between the two beds.  Lazuli and Krillin look surprised to see them, too.

“We were--” Krillin starts.

“I was--” Raditz says at the same time.  He scrambles to his feet and hastily adds, “just leaving.”

“Yeah,” Lapis agrees, dully.

He starts towards the door but Lazuli and Krillin are in the way.  They seem to realize this and step to the side.  Raditz sees that they’re holding hands and  _ that _ is interesting, but not really that interesting to  _ him. _  He wonders what Lapis thinks.  He turns and sees that he’s right behind him.  He’s smaller than him and slender--just bones and shiny hair--and he rises up on his tiptoes to kiss his cheek.

“Have a good night.”

He urges him through the doorway and shuts the door, leaving Raditz confused.


	9. The Solo's Really Long but It's a Pretty Song

It’s become routine for Kale to find him either before or after a show while everyone else is either driving to the next city or carousing drunkenly at some nearby club or bar.  Tonight, they’re in the back of the van and she has her head on his shoulder.  Normally he’s fairly reticent to touch but he doesn’t mind it with her.  Maybe it’s because they’re both gay or that they’re so similar.  She told him about her parents and he told her about his dad and they have that mutual understanding.  Before, the only person he didn’t mind touching him was Turles, who’s so tactile in how he talks to people that he doesn’t mind it.  It’s just a part of who he is.

It isn’t just their similar upbringings or that they’ve both logged hundreds of hours into their respective Pokemon games.  He and Kale are both in love with the drummers in their band.  Granted, he wouldn’t say that he’s  _ in love _ with Raditz, but he’s had a crush on him for so long that it almost feels that way.  Kale, though, from what she’s told him, what she feels for Caulifla is deep.  She gets a mesmerized look on her face as she talks about her but then lowers her head and says that it’ll never happen.  That part he gets most of all.

“You have to go sound check,” he says to her.

As the tour has gone on, King Kai’s moved them to the back of the roster.  He says it’s because they’re the most popular and they need to close out the show but Broly’s fairly certain that it’s because of how often something bad has happened during their set.  It’s been a couple weeks since the guitar-punching incident but it hasn’t been forgotten, least of all by their manager.  Kakarrot has a new guitar, at least, which the record company paid for but King Kai claimed would be coming out of Vegeta’s earnings from the tour.

Kale sighs and toys with the stray threads on the cuff of her shirt.  Broly had given her one of his when she’d mentioned she was cold one night.  He’s certain that it doesn’t dissuade the gossip floating around that they’re dating but it doesn’t matter.  He and Kale know the truth and that’s all that matters.  Well, Kale and Caulifla who spoke to him one night by the pool--or maybe he imagined that.  With all the years of his dad telling him that half of what he said and did to him was imagined, he still has issues differentiating reality from fantasy.

“I know.  I’m just tired.”

They have about a month to go and everyone’s feeling it.  U6 is the youngest of them and has the least experience.  He’s, at least, used to endless nights and back to back shows, even if the travel aspect is new.

“Come on.”

He nudges her off of his shoulder and Kale reluctantly gets off of him.  She dusts off her skirt and together they leave the van.

The venue is yet another dank, low-ceilinged bar.  He wonders what it’s like for Kale and her bandmates to be playing in places where they can’t even get a drink.  Granted, when they first formed Apetail, only Turles was old enough to drink and they performed at Shugesh’s bar all the time.

“Kale, there you are!”

Caulifla’s there, all big hair and attitude, dragging her away.  Kale doesn’t seem upset, though, and she’s smiling as she’s tugged behind her.

“C’mon.  Leave big, tall, and mopey and let’s get going.”

She tosses a wave over her shoulder as Caulifla drags her through the kitchen entrance of the bar.  Broly stays outside for a moment longer, hands in his pockets, before following them in.

\--

Chi-Chi knows this is probably a bad idea.  No, there’s no “probably” about it.  This is a bad idea.  She isn’t sure why she checked the schedule and why she drove out here.  She doubly doesn’t know why Gohan’s in his carseat, too excited to sleep.

The ride is only a few hours.  The tour is doubling back, hitting cities it didn’t hit on the first go through before reaching the city of origin.  Apparently she can’t wait that long because she put her son in the backseat and drove--to what?  She hasn’t followed news, has tried to push Kakarrot from her head and deal with him when all is said and done.  When she calls him, she only has Gohan talk to him because she isn’t sure if she can trust herself.  She doesn’t want to yell at him in front of their son.

It occurs to her, as she parks in the dirt parking lot for the venue, that she doesn’t have a ticket.  Logically, she should just go home and tell Gohan that daddy will be back in a month.  More than that, this is a bar and she has a four-year-old with her.  They wouldn’t even get in.  God, this is a bad idea.  Chi-Chi’s never considered herself that impulsive.  It took her over a month to realize that she liked the “loadie loser” (as her friends called him) she had been tasked with tutoring.  It took her another few weeks to decide to act on those feelings.  She admits that she can fly off the handle in terms of her emotions but also that that’s different from being  _ impulsive. _

“We’re here!” Gohan says excitedly.

She bites her lip.  They shouldn’t go in.  She should say that they’re going home and come up with a reason.  Instead she puts the car in park and kills the engine.

Music is making the leaves of the tree she’s parked under vibrate.  She isn’t sure who’s playing but she can tell that it isn’t Apetail.  She’s always claimed not to like their music but damn if she can’t recognize it.  She takes Gohan from his carseat and holds his hand as they walk up the dark, crowded lot.  There’s a guy collecting tickets out front and he eyes her with suspicion immediately as anyone would eye a young woman holding the hand of a small child at a punk show.

“Uh.” She tries to think of something to say.

The guy’s gaze grows more intense.  Chi-Chi squares her shoulders, ready to go to battle--once she figures out how to word her argument.

“Chi-Chi?”

She isn’t given a chance when she hears someone call her name.  She turns and sees Nappa.  He holds a cigarillo between his fingers but he stubs it out on the outside wall of the bar, perhaps instinctively.  Everyone knows Chi-Chi’s stance on smoking of any sort.  She was only ever able to get Kakarrot to stop smoking weed in the house, but she still considered it a victory.

“Oh.  Hi, Nappa.”

“Hi, Mr. Nappa!  Do you know where daddy is?”

Nappa slips the remaining half of his cigarillo into his jacket and approaches them to ruffle Gohan’s hair with one, massive hand.

“Getting ready to go on soon.” He looks up at Chi-Chi. “Did you come to the show?”

“No...yes...I don’t know,” she says with a sigh. “I did it without thinking but Gohan can’t be in there.”

“I wanna see daddy play!”

He pouts and crosses his arms.

“You’re too young to be in there,” she explains.

“I can watch ‘im.”

Chi-Chi quirks a brow at Nappa.

“You?”

“Hey, I babysit five grown men for a living.  I can handle one four-year-old.  C’mon.”

He beckons her with one hand and Chi-Chi--with Gohan in tow--follows him around to the back of the bar.  Overturned instrument cases are piled outside Turles’s van from where it’s parked crooked in the small lot behind the building.

“Go on in and see him play,” he says. “I’ll keep an eye on Gohan.”

He bends down to take Gohan’s hand and leads him over to the pile of instrument cases.  Chi-Chi looks at the disarray and thinks that that can’t be good for the hinges and leather.  Nappa picks Gohan up and sits him on one of the cases for Raditz’s drumset.

“You ever play poker, kid?”

“Nuh-uh.”

He reaches into his jacket and produces a deck of cards.  From one of the music cases, he pulls out a bag of gummy worms.

“These are Turles’s and what we’re gonna be bettin’ with.  Now, it starts by each of us gettin’ five cards…”

Chi-Chi bites her lip, not sure if she should go.

“Go in through the back,” he tells her, not looking up from shuffling the deck. “It’s unlocked.”

She looks at the door.  It  _ is _ why she came down here.  Giving one last look to Nappa teaching her only son how to gamble, against her better judgment, she goes through the door.

\--

Kakarrot isn’t sure why he gets a text from Nappa before they go on that tells him to play the one song he’s been able to write on the road.  Telling him to add it to the setlist if it isn’t already on there--which it’s not.  They’ve played it, messing around in hotel rooms, but never performed it live.  He’s been waiting.

“Know what this is about?” He shows his phone to Vegeta who shrugs.

“No clue but I haven’t gotten a chance to try that one with my fucked up hand.” He waves around his still bandaged hand. “But I guess we can cut ‘Fuck Nowhere’ for it.”

Kakarrot nods.  Vegeta’s been more agreeable lately--or at least he’s trying to be.  He might be in a downswing, though, which is worrisome.  Not that any of them can do a thing about it.  They have to ride it out for another month and then--what?  King Kai wants them to release an album with their new stuff and that’s an uncertain certainty that he isn’t ready for.  They have an EP but a full album is another story.

The others murmur agreement and they switch out with Kame Kami.  Krillin high fives him as they walk by.  Kakarrot gets to his spot and adjusts the strap of his new guitar over his shoulder.

“Hey,” he shouts into the mic. “We’re Apetail--you’re here, we’re here.  Let’s have a good time, yeah?”

The crowd reacts as it always does and he can never get tired of that.  The roar of it.  He feels it in his whole body.  He’s already been bouncing off the walls all day but now it’s kicked into high gear.  It’s like his veins are a water slide and he’s zip-zip-zooming through them.  He jumps around the stage, going wild.  He introduces the songs when he can but mostly they just roar into the next one, guitars blending together and drums clashing, the thump of the bass and the fluidity of Broly changing instruments between songs.

It gets to the song Nappa told him to play: “Treat You Right.”  It’s the song he wrote for Chi-Chi, the first song he’s ever written for her--a fact he realized when he was writing it.  In a perfect world, he wanted to perform it for the first time with her there but the odds of her going to one of their shows are slim to none.  Especially one here, hours out of town.

He goes into it, singing his heart out as if she’s there, trying to conjure her growing irritated with the moshing crowd and elbowing them out of her way.  Realizing it’s about her and looking away, blushing despite herself.

When the show’s over, his throat is raw and his body’s electric and the crowd is screaming.  He leans against Vegeta who doesn’t even have the energy to shove him off.

“We killed this shit,” Turles says, breathless. “And no one got punched or electrocuted.”

Kakarrot lets out a wild laugh and they say good-bye to the crowd.  He’s backstage, being handed a water bottle by one of the roadies, when he hears someone speak.

“You’ve gotten better.”

He must be mistaken but for one second he thinks he somehow conjured Chi-Chi here.  He turns and there she is.

“Chi-Chi?” His voice is still hoarse and he can’t believe what he’s seeing. “Wh--”

“I came down here and.  That song.  Um.”

Nappa.  Nappa had to have known.  That’s why he texted him.

“It’s about you,” he tells her. “I wrote it because you--you and Gohan--you’re my world and I know I’m gonna probably keep fucking up but never like this and I can be your fuck-up if you’ll have me and-and-and--”

He isn’t making sense but then it doesn’t matter because Chi-Chi’s in his arms and he can bury his nose in her hair.

“Gohan’s here, too,” she says. “Do you wanna go see him?”

“More than anything.”

\--

He’d never admit it but maybe seeing the cloyingly sweet reunion between Kakarrot and Chi-Chi softened him enough to the point that when Cabba asked him if he could go to their motel room and see “some guitar stuff,” Vegeta said yes.

He isn’t sure what to do once they’re in the room.  Everyone else is off doing whatever they want and it’s just him and Cabba, who’s looking around like this shitty motel room will help make him a better musician.  The thing is, he’s too worn out to play.  His hand isn’t fully healed and it  _ hurts _ after playing a two hour set.  He looks at Cabba’s eager, excited face and tries to think of something.

“Uh...you ever do shots, kid?”

Cabba hesitates before nodding. “Totally.”

He’s probably lying but Vegeta’s never considered himself a role model.  He drags out a bottle of JD and two of the wrapped, plastic cups that came in their room.  He plops it on the nightstand and unscrews the top.

“Here,” he says once he’s poured two shots.

Cabba gags but he gets it down.  He’s a little impressed.  He matches him shot for shot until they’re five in and he’s starting to look woozy and green.

“Alright, let’s stop.”

He looks relieved and sags down on the bed.

“That’s...it sure is warm here.” He puts his hand on his stomach. “I think I like whiskey.”

Vegeta smirks and sits next to him.  Cabba leans against him.

“It’s so cool getting to go on tour with you.  When North Galaxy signed us, I couldn’t believe it.  Your band was on it--yours!” Cabba’s eyes shine as he babbles. “Have I told you I’ve seen you five times?  I got my jacket ‘cause of you.  And my ear, too.  Well, the piercing.  I didn’t get an ear, that’d be weird.”

The kid probably doesn’t realize how much he’s puffing up his ego, but he appreciates it.  He’s always had a weakness for people telling him he’s good or better than others.  The therapist his dad sent him to after his mom died said he had issues with “validation” but what the fuck did she know?

“Thanks, kid.” He’s not completely unaffected by the whiskey but he’s faring far better than Cabba.

“You’re just.  Wow.  I’m.  Let me show you, okay?”

He quirks a brow. “Show me what?”

Cabba gives him a heavy-lidded stare and leans in towards him.  He can smell the booze on his breath and he’s hot, so hot--practically emanating heat--while he’s stroking a hand down his face.  Vegeta takes him by the wrist and moves his hand away.

“You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I do.  This is exactly what I want.”

He kisses him sloppily, all spit and tongue, and Vegeta pushes him back.

“You don’t want this.”

“I do.  I want to show you how much you’ve meant to me.”

Cabba goes for him again and, when he’s rebuffed, he leans back.

“Okay...what about this?”

He isn’t sure what he means until Cabba’s unbuttoning his jeans and pulling his cock out.

“Cabba--”

“It’s okay.” He looks at him, eyes still bleary and blurred but determined. “I might be a virgin but my mouth is not.”

“Cabba, no.  Stop.  You’re nineteen.”

“We’re only five years apart!”

He grimaces. “It’s a big five years.”

He inches away, his head hitting the headboard of the bed, but he’s able to extricate himself from Cabba’s hands and zip himself back into his jeans.

“Oh, god.” He seems to have just realized what he’s done. “This’s so embarrassing.”

Cabba looks away and puts his hands on his forehead.

“Oh, no no no no...oh--HURK!”

He leans forward and vomits all over the moss green carpet of the motel.

“It’s...uh...alright.  C’mere.”

Cabba wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and looks miserable.  Miserable and like he’s going to keel over.  Vegeta gets off the bed and maneuvers Cabba’s limbs to get him lying down and under the sheets.

“This is so embarrassing.  Crap…”

“It’s fine,” he says but now there’s a massive puddle of throw up on the floor and he has a sick, drunk nineteen-year-old in his bed. “Just.  Sleep.”

Cabba puts his hands over his face but sleep hits him easily.  Maybe asking the kid if he wanted to do shots was a  _ bad _ idea but he hasn’t had any good ideas in a long, long time.  He looks over to Cabba.  Sleeping like that, he can’t help but be reminded of Tarble again.  He’s always been sort of a shitty brother.  From when Tarble was born, even.  He had wanted to be an only child again so badly, that he had taken what he’d seen in the movie  _ Labyrinth _ and tried to get goblins to take him away.  They’ll never have the sort of closeness that Kakarrot and Raditz have, but they’ve both been fucked up by their upbringing and....

He looks at Cabba again and the age and even the way he styles his hair is about right.  Probably because he’s feeling the whiskey a bit himself, he takes his phone out.  He dutifully skips the B’s on his contact lists and finds the number he’s looking for.  He doesn’t know if he’ll pick up, but after three rings he does.

“Hello?” He sounds tired and groggy, like he just got up.

Vegeta sits down on the unoccupied bed.

“Hey, Tarbs.”

\--

“This tastes like cough medicine.”

Lapis’s eyes have this almost supernatural glow as he tips the glass bottle to his lips.  He wipes the purple liquid from his lips after he swallows.

“I like it.” He lets the bottle dangle from his fingers. “And besides, it only has about one percent alcohol and we have to be responsible.”

He gestures behind the, where Gohan is sleeping.  After the show, Chi-Chi and Kakarrot had gone off to talk and probably have makeup sex and Raditz volunteered to keep an eye on Gohan.  He and Lapis sit in his hotel room.  Lazuli and 16 are both gone and, except for the sleeping child, they’re alone.   _ Mulholland Drive _ is on the tiny television--this time Lapis found a channel playing it.

“It’s also very, very cheap.”

Raditz regards the grape-flavored drink and thinks about how Turles would like it.  He doesn’t automatically curse himself for thinking of it so he thinks they’re making headway, maybe.  They still haven’t talked about it but he feels like he’s finally starting to unpack the last five years.

“Your nephew’s cute,” Lapis says and the subject change startles him.

“Thanks.”

He isn’t sure why he said thanks.  Gohan looks like Chi-Chi with only very little of his and Kakarrot’s side of the family.  Even so, it’s a compliment, right?

“Gummy worm?”

Lapis offers him the bag but Raditz shakes his head.  They’re technically Gohan’s winnings.  He had taken Nappa for everything he was worth.  When he’d passed him off to Raditz, he’d said “that kid is a goddamn card sharp.”

“So…” Raditz stares up at a water stain on the ceiling. “Why did you kiss me?”

He can’t see Lapis but he sees a shift of shiny black hair out of his peripheral vision.  He’s been meaning to ask but the timing had never been right.  It might not be right now, either, but he isn’t sure when it will be.

“Did I offend your honor?  Do I have to court you?”

He lowers his head before his mind falls out of sync staring at the water stain and sees the look of amusement on his face.

“Court me?”

“You know.” Lapis tips his head to the side again and blinks his hypnotically blue eyes. “I like you, Raditz.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?”

He winces after he says it.  He wishes he was better with words.  He’s considered Lapis his friend.  His friend who makes him watch weird movies and TV shows.  He considered him that because he thought that there was all there was.  They’re friends but hearing this--it makes him rethink that stance.  It makes him realize that he likes him, too.  He likes the acerbic tilt of his head and the way his lips curve up into those sardonic little smiles.  He thinks about their first meeting, eating burritos after midnight on the curb, looking at the stars.  Raditz isn’t a whiz at relationships.  He knows he still needs to sort things with Turles and finally-- _ finally-- _ move on.  Being with Yamcha was fun and he still feels bad about turning Broly down, but then there’s Lapis.  Lapis looking at him with those blue eyes rimmed with eyeliner and his shiny hair and how he belt deep, dark longing out in all of his songs.

“Yeah.”

God, he’s shitty at putting his thoughts into words.

“Yeah?” Lapis’s brow knits.

“I like...you, too.”

There’s a beat of silence and the woman onscreen is crying but then it passes and Lapis is kissing him.  Raditz pulls him into his arms and he’s just limbs and bones but they’re as tough as steel as he clings to his shirt.  He opens his mouth to allow him to deepen the kiss.  He pulls himself on top of Raditz’s lap and straddles him.  Everything is electric, each touch feels like he’s shocking him.

Gohan makes a snuffling sound in his sleep and rolls over.  The sound makes Raditz come back to earth and he pulls away.

“Not while he’s here,” he says.

Lapis wipes his mouth and nods in agreement.

“But soon.  I liked that.”

He smiles a bit. “Good.”

They resume watching the movie but Lapis stays in his lap and Raditz drapes his arms around his waist and rests his chin on his head.  It feels natural--organic, even.

“This movie borrows a lot from  _ Persona,” _ he tells him and at his blank look he adds, “the 1966 Ingmar Bergman film?”

“Still nothin’.  My brother’s the one who knows movies and he only likes things that qualify for Video Nasty.”

To this day, Kakarrot’s weird obsession with horror and gore when it comes to his cinematic tastes confounds him.

“Oh.  Did you know my minor was cinema studies?”

Honestly, he could have guessed.

“Really?  So did you wanna make nature documentaries?”

Lapis chuckles and leans back against him. “Maybe.”

He picks up the half-drunk bottle of grape disgust and holds it to Raditz who shakes his head.  Even if he liked the taste, he likes where his hands are now too much to move them.  He won’t press for them to define whatever they are.  There’ll be time to figure it out later.  For now, he just wants to hold him while he struggles to figure out what the hell is going on in this movie.

\--

Chi-Chi isn’t sure whose room this is but they’re the only ones in it.  They’re both fully clothed, stretched out on one of the beds.  Before they laid down, Kakarrot stripped off the bedspread because he knows how she hates them.  She strokes her finger down the curve of his cheekbone and he grins at her.

“I can’t believe you’re here.”

He keeps saying it, like he’s in awe.  Every now and then, he’ll take her hands or bury his face in her hair as if to check that she’s really there, that she’s tangible.  Chi-Chi takes his hands in hers.

“So…” she starts. “I think I forgive you for the whole...tour thing.  You’ve gotten really good and that song…”

He’s never written anything for her.  She’s never forced him to or bugged him about it, but the thought had never come.  And then that song.  She knows it isn’t something so flowery that hearing it would make her forgive him and they’d skip off into the sunset.  Life is too real for that.  She’s known that since the summer after graduation when the stick she peed on turned blue.

“I know I can say that I won’t space out and do something like it again but I probably will.”

At least he’s honest.

“But I’m going to try,” he says and determination flashes in his dark eyes. “I know I’m kinda destined to be a forgetful fuck-up but I want to try.  For you and Gohan.  To communicate and...I don’t want to lose either of you again.”

He never really lost her but Chi-Chi lets him keep talking.  His hands are toying with her hair as he speaks and she lets him.  He always is fidgeting or doing something with his hands.  It’s part of that energy he always has.  She’s missed it.

“You’ll try,” she says, choosing her words carefully, “and I’ll try to stop just ending it.  It isn’t fair to you and it isn’t fair to Gohan.”

He smiles and she smiles back.  Chi-Chi reaches up and takes his hand from his hair.  She laces their fingers together and draws closer to him.

“We’ll both try,” he says and she nods. “But mostly me.”

She laughs and presses her forehead against his chest.  When she lifts her head, he’s looking at her with his lips slightly pursed and she gives him a single, close-mouthed kiss.  Forgiveness.

They take their time after that.  They undress languidly, letting their hand roam slowly over one another’s bodies, reacquainting themselves with the most sensitive parts.  They make love gently.  Kakarrot’s stroking her hair and holding her against him and Chi-Chi’s head rests on his shoulder.  She feels him move inside her.  Feels him kiss down from her mouth, down her neck, and then he lifts his head.  Chi-Chi opens her eyes and looks at him.

“This is like that Journey song,” he says.

“What?”

He holds her to him and starts singing loudly.

“FAITHFULLY!  I’M FOREVER YOURS!”

Chi-Chi puts a hand over his mouth.  She feels him grin against her palm and then he’s kissing it.  She retracts her hand and they fall back into bed.


	10. Gotta Find My Way to Heaven 'Cause I Did My Time in Hell

It’s not the last show but it’s getting close to it.  Raditz can tell that everyone’s relieved.  He feels like he’s been gone for years or that they’ll get home and find that the city’s been turned into a barren wasteland, somehow--or in the throes of the zombie apocalypse.  Or maybe he shouldn’t have fallen asleep while Kakarrot was watching _28 Days Later_ the night before.

He draws his arm across his chest and cracks his shoulder.  Kame Kami is still playing and they have probably about another twenty minutes before they’re on.  This whole thing still feels surreal, especially as the pace has picked up in the last leg of the tour.  People want to talk to _them._  They mostly talk to Kakarrot and Vegeta since they’re the frontmen, but Turles is the poster boy for rock’n’roll excess and people clamor to talk to him, too.  Raditz has gotten a few people talking to him but even seeing the interviews and press coverage online, he can’t believe that it’s happened.

He looks at Turles as he messes with the tuning of his guitar.  Before the show, he has to do it.  He draws in a breath and walks over.

“Hey.  Can I talk to you before we go on?”

Turles blinks at him and the stage lights are winking off of his piercings.

“Sure.”

Raditz pulls him far enough away that they don’t have to shout over the music.  He tugs on his hair and Turles’s eyebrows arch as he recognizes the gesture--a sure sign that he’s nervous.

“Okay, so--”

Turles holds a hand up. “Wait.  First things first: you’re with Lapis now, yeah?”

“Oh.  Um.  Yeah.”

To his surprise, Turles gives a smirky smile. “Good.  I’m glad.”

“You are?”

“Yeah.” He shrugs. “I mean, okay, I’m a _little_ jealous but I don’t have that right, yeah?  I mean, I blew it and I think it’s time I realized it.”

He’s surprised.  Usually, when he and Turles try to talk about anything regarding their relationship, it turns into a fight.

“Yeah?”

He nods. “Yeah.  I mean, don’t laugh, but I always kinda hoped we’d get back together but we’re not.”

Raditz shakes his head.

“No, we’re not.” He rubs the back of his neck nervously. “But I should also stop punishing you for it.”

To his surprise, Turles doesn’t smirk.  He gives a slight, crooked little smile.

“Shit, Radi, I’ve wanted to hear that for years.”

He isn’t sure what to say but, luckily, Turles isn’t done talking.

“And...I’m sorry.” He laughs. “I don’t think I ever said that.  I’m sorry I slept with Kakarrot.  And I should have said it, what, almost six years ago?”

He’s so surprised to hear it that he gives a laugh of his own.

“Thanks.”

Turles spreads his arms. “So, hug?”

He nods and hugs him tightly, careful not to bump his guitar.

“I’m glad,” Turles mutters into his ear. “I’ve missed my best friend.”

“I missed you, too.”

They break the hug and Turles doesn’t remark that it isn’t very punk rock for them to be hugging and on the verge of tears.

“You’re happy, though?” he asks, cocking his head to the side. “With Lapis?”

“I think so, yeah.  I mean, we just got together but.  Yeah.”

He gives that crooked smile again. “Good.  I’m glad.”

Together, they walk back to the others.

“Hurry the fuck up,” Vegeta growls.  He gestures to the stage where Kame Kami is finishing up.

“We were putting bullshit to rest,” Turles explains. “Calm down.”

They make the switch out but Raditz lingers backstage for a moment longer.  He snags Broly’s arm and keeps him back there with him.  He needs to talk to him.  He needs to not just be nicer to him to make up for the fact that he doesn’t feel the same for him.

“Hey…”

“What?” Broly asks, voice flat and dull.

“Just…”

He doesn’t know what to say.  “Sorry I don’t like you?” it sounds so disingenuous.  Raditz chews his lip for a moment before he rises up on the balls of his feet and places a kiss on his lips.  When he pulls back, Broly places the tips of his fingers against his lips like he can’t believe it just happened.

“I’m sorry,” Raditz says. “Don’t hate me too much, okay?”

He walks out onstage and sits behind his drums.  Broly crosses in front of him and stands behind his steel pedal guitar.  He glances over at Raditz and gives him a smile.

\--

It isn’t often that Vegeta even looks out at the crowd in shows.  The lights are too bright and the crowds have gotten too wild.  People are throwing themselves around, throwing themselves at the stage, even if they’re playing their more tame stuff.  Yet, somehow, he looks out at the people in a break while Kakarrot is introducing the next song, his voice giddy and breathless.  He looks out and sees a flash of blue.  He squints, and leans in and it’s not just blue--it’s her.  He doesn’t know why she’s here--they’re still a city over from home--but Bulma is out in the crowd, looking like she doesn’t know why she’s there either.

Something clicks in his head, something he has to do, and he pulls his guitar strap over his head.  He shoves it in the stand and walks off.

“And this is...uhhh, Geta?”

He can’t see him but he knows that Kakarrot is blinking at him in confusion.  The second he steps backstage, King Kai is on him.

“What are you doing?” he demands. “Get back out there!”

Vegeta looks at him. “I will.  Calm down.  I have to get something.”

He digs around their gear until he finds an acoustic guitar.  He isn’t sure whose it is but they’ve all played it (except Raditz, who can’t play guitar).  He walks back out and pulls the strap over his head as he reaches his microphone.  He sees Turles mouth “What the fuck?” to Raditz who’s shrugging and shaking his head.

“Uh…” Kakarrot is staring at him, wide-eyed.

Vegeta ignores them and picks out the first chords on his guitar.  He learned this song years ago, in a moment when he let himself think about his mom.  But more than that, he remembers what Bulma said about it.  Her secret wish for someone to play it for her.  How she had jokingly asked for him to play it and he’d said no.

_“Hey, babe, what’s in your eyes?  I saw them flashin’, like airplane lights…”_

He sings through the first verse before the others clue in and join in.  Kakarrot bends his guitar as well as he can and Raditz taps out a beat.  Broly chimes in, sounding like he’s already mastered it when he’s maybe heard the song once, ever.  He builds the song, striking the chords with intensity despite the way his hand still has twinges of pain.  He reaches the part where the song picks up emotionally, going hard as he can as it goes from a ballad to a rock song.

_“Oh, babe, you got my soul.  You got the silver, you got the gold.  You got my love, just leave me blind, I don’t care, no, that’s no big surprise!”_

He sees her as he finishes.  Sees her stand and stare and, somehow, he feels like their eyes meet.  He knows what he has to do.  He tosses off his guitar and hops off the stage.  He wades through the grabbing hands and confused yet intrigued fans until they’re standing right in front of each other.  It still strikes him as oddly poetic that they’re very nearly the same size.  Bulma looks at him and he looks back, feeling suddenly foolish.  He doesn’t do this shit.  He doesn’t leave himself emotionally bare or sing for anyone other than himself--except once.  When they were first starting out, they all played covers for various members of their families at a showcase at Shugesh’s.  He played “Shine a Light” for his mom.  This is different, though.  The person he sang for can see it, hear it--they can react to it.

“Don’t you have a set to finish?” she says.  That’s her grand introduction.  Maybe he deserves it.

“Kakarrot can do it.”

The band is looking at him--looking at them--and he feels like they probably understand it.  They understand it enough to cover his ass when King Kai inevitably loses it.

“Let’s get out of here,” he says.

“And do what?” Bulma words it like a challenge.

Her hair is different.  It’s just grazing her shoulders where before it spilled down her back.  Then again, it’s been how long?  She’s here, yeah, but what does it matter?  Some silly love song won’t change the fact that he’s a grade-a dick just like Kakarrot’s song for Chi-Chi didn’t magically make all of their problems go away.

“Talk.”

“You want to talk?”

“Yeah.  I owe you that.”

A small smile ghosts on her lips. “You do, don’t you?”

\--

The drive to Bulma’s place doesn’t take long.  They talk only a little.  She says their songs sounded good and asks about the bruises and scars on the back of his hand.  He asks how her thesis defense went.  Simple things.  Things that fill the air until they’re outside her apartment building.

Her apartment is cleaner than before--somewhat.  Bulma strokes a hand down his arm and then bites her lip.

“Listen...before we do anything else, I have to tell you something.” She twists a strand of hair around one finger and sighs. “No matter what happens or what we talk about, you have to know that it’s not just us anymore.”

Vegeta wonders what the hell that means.  Is she seeing someone?  It’s been so long, she has to be.  There’s no way she sat around _pining_ while he dicked off and after he was such an asshole to her.

“Not just us?”

She nods. “Come with me.”

Her apartment has two bedrooms, a luxury that always amazed him even though he was the occupant of the sole bedroom in their own apartment, and Bulma opens the door quietly.  Before, it had been a storage room of all her old clothes and boxes of stuff that couldn’t fit elsewhere.  Now it’s...a nursery.  He sees the crib and the changing table.

“The fuck?” he mutters.

Bulma leads him to the crib where an infant is sleeping.

“This is Trunks,” she tells him.

A kid.  She has a kid.  He’s chunky and wearing jungle animal footie pajamas and he looks...well, a bit like Vegeta did when he was a baby.  He tries to do the math, wondering if this kid is his.  If Bulma had his kid while he was away.  It’s been, what, eleven months?  He can’t judge ages on babies but he’s not a newborn.

“Trunks,” he repeats. “Trunks Briefs.  Jesus.”

She shakes her head.

“I gave him his dad’s last name.” She pauses and then says, a bit shaky. “Trunks Prince.”

A feeling he can’t describe washes over him as he looks down at this baby--at his son--sleeping in the crib.

“I was about three months along when we, you know, broke up.  Had no idea, though.” At his look, she says, “Listen, my period has always been super irregular, okay?  Lay off.”

He puts his hands up in mock surrender and then leans on the crib.  Trunks’s hair looks soft and, it’s hard to tell in the gloom--the only source of light comes from two nightlights--but it’s not dark like his.  He can see the similarity, though, from his own baby pictures.

“I was going to tell you but it felt so...like what would I do?  Send you a text being like ‘hey, we had a nasty fight and you’re away for a year but I’m pregnant.  XOXO.’” Bulma shakes her head and laughs. “But there he is.  Our kid.”

“Ours,” he echoes.

She comes up next to him and stands close enough so their shoulders touch but doesn’t make a move further.

“Okay,” she says finally, “He’s just started sleeping through the night so...let’s go back to the kitchen and talk.  So we don’t wake him up.”

He nods and follows her out.  He spares one last look at the crib where his son--his _son--_ is sleeping.

“You want coffee?” she asks.

He shakes his head.  They sit across from each other at the table.

“So you remembered,” she says finally. “‘You Got the Silver.’”

“Yeah.”

“It sounded good even if the others were confused.”

He shrugs.  They really aren’t what he wanted to talk about.  The closest he’s gotten to talking about was once with Caulifla when he just--said it.  And it hurt, saying it out loud.

“So,” she says.

“This isn’t...I don’t know if it’ll explain how big a dick I was but here it is.” He pauses. “The opening up thing.  You wanted me to do.”

Bulma nods and tucks some hair behind her ears.  It immediately falls forward and he fights the sudden urge to tuck it back.

“Okay.” She reaches out and strokes his hand.  She rolls her thumb over one of his knuckles, one of the ones that’s still bruised.

“My family’s a bit fucked up,” he says.

“I’ve gathered that.”

He’s forgotten how she speaks without thinking but he finds that he’s kind of missed it.

“My dad’s family used to be rich but we’ve been losing money for years now.  We still have the house and shit, though.  Anyway, things were always kinda weird.  Like my dad is just...I dunno if he wanted kids.  He wanted someone to have his name--you know, me--but I don’t think he wanted to be a father.”

It’s weird, saying it out loud.  He never has.  The others in the band, they’ve guessed it or they’ve seen it but he’s never talked about it.

“My mom loved us.  At first.  Before shit got really bad.  She gave me my first guitar and she was always playing, like, classic rock stuff in the car to annoy my dad.” He pauses. “They loved each other, though.  That’s the fucking kicker.  They never stopped.

“Eventually, a bit after my brother was born, my mom started to get bad.  She spent all her time in the greenhouse with her lilies and ignored me and my brother.  She would start hearing shit, seeing shit.” He clenches his jaw. “Never mind.  I don’t--shit was just bad, okay?”

Bulma nods, wisely not speaking.  He can’t get deep into this yet just like he can’t talk about how he can’t stand hearing himself sing on playbacks because it reminds him of when his dad would record him and Tarble when he thought they were lying or had done something wrong.

“When I was eleven, my mom…” He shuts his eyes.  Saying it, almost blithely, was one thing but trying to talk about it is hard. “She killed herself.  We were out at some school awards thing for Tarble without her and we came back and my dad told me to go get her.

“And, fuck.  All I remember is seeing it and thinking ‘how could someone lose this much blood and still be alive?’”

“She wasn’t dead?” Bulma shuts her mouth again after she speaks. “Shit, sorry.”

“No, uh.  She wasn’t yet.  She did it in the hospital where they were supposed to be watching her and taking care of her.” He stops. “After that, the kids at school would make fun of me.  One kid, Zarbon, was pretty bad but every time I tried to fight back, a teacher would suddenly be there to threaten me with discipline.  One time, in the lunchroom, I was walking by and someone said some shit and he just said ‘he takes after his mother’ and I just swung my tray in his face.”

He still remembers seeing Zarbon’s nose burst like a cherry tomato.  How he felt--angry--and how it was better than the numbness he had been in before.

“I got expelled and that’s when I switched to public school--where I met Kakarrot and the others.” He scowls. “I dunno.  Shit’s still bad.  I can’t explain it but--”

Bulma quiets him by squeezing his uninjured hand.

“You don’t have to.  You don’t have to say everything now,” she says. “I’m just glad you’ve given me, like, a little.  I dunno.  That’s just…”

“Yeah.”

She doesn’t burst into tears or say she’s sorry and he’s--glad.  He doesn’t want pity.

“So.” Bulma toys with her hair again and licks her lips nervously. “What now?”

“I didn’t mean what I said,” he says. “About it not being deep.  I was afraid that it was.”

“Good.” She pauses. “Look, whatever happens with us--I want you to be in Trunks’s life.  I wasn’t sure how to tell you before but...I want you to be there.”

“I want to be there,” he says and it’s true.  Seeing that kid--it’s his kid.  Their kid. “For you both.”

Bulma tips her head to the side.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.  I was fucked up after it all,” he admits, “and I didn’t want to admit it even to myself.  I think, shit--I think I love you.”

He must make a face because Bulma laughs.

“Only you would scowl after admitting you’re in love.” She twists her hair around one finger again and then says, “For what it’s worth, I love you too.”

He thinks to that cheesiness that Nappa said on the way to Urgent Care and pushes it back.  It isn’t that simple.  It isn’t some soulmate bullshit.  He and Bulma are just two people who found each other and then, somehow, found each other again.

“So where do we go from here?” she asks.

He shrugs. “I dunno.  Figure it out.”

She kisses him and he’s caught off guard but it doesn’t bother him.  He cups her face and kisses back and it’s like the past year melts away.  She’s in his arms again and that’s all that matters.

“Trunks sleeps through the night, huh?” he asks.

She nods. “Uh huh.”

“Good.  Then we won’t wake him up.”

She laughs and calls him naughty.  They go into the bedroom and the door closes behind them with a gentle click.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by the by, [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c3Sdf7u6Ts) is the song he sings


	11. Because the Things that Last Forever Are the Things That Never Change

It feels weird coming home again.  The van drives past the familiar buildings and the familiar streets and it feels almost alien.  On the tour, time seemed to stand still or, at the very least, accelerate in fits and bursts.  The reality of the time passed and how things have changed sets in as they pull up to the venue for the last show.

It’s some nondescript building that holds concerts and business events.  The carpets smell new and there’s little potted plants all around the makeshift stage.

Broly notes that the others seem to be in good spirits.  Turles and Raditz are getting along again, truly, for the first time in years.  Kakarrot has his family back.  Even surly Vegeta seems to be in a good mood.  When he started playing the theme from The Simpsons partway through their last sound check, Turles laughed and said “Oh, shit, Geta’s got his groove back.”  He can’t help but feel like he’s on the outside of it all.

He shouldn’t be mad.  Raditz let him down in the nicest way possible and yet he’s still...not mad, not bitter, but another emotion he can’t name.  It doesn’t help that everyone seems to be in love.  Kale and Caulifla finally admitted their love for one another and she’s been spending less time with him and more with her new girlfriend.  Broly’s barely seen her except when she came around to talk about the song they’re singing tonight.  He doesn’t talk to nearly anyone else from the other bands so he isn’t bothered with their romantic developments.  It’s not like seeing Lazuli and Krillin holding hands fills him with angry bitterness.

He’s also grown more tolerant towards Kakarrot.  Broly’s reason for disliking him has never been solid and he just has this  _ way _ of wearing you down without any effort on his part.  He doesn’t think they’ll ever be friends, but he doesn’t hate him.  It’s weird how his perception of each brother has shifted.  His own fault again.  He should have listened to his dad when he said, over and over again, “the only person that will ever love you is me, Broly.  Remember that.”

So he isn’t nauseated by how happy Kakarrot seems now.  Chi-Chi and Gohan came back to their last show (as well as this one) and he lifted his son onto shoulders as he played.

Bulma isn’t here but Broly knows that Vegeta’s sudden good mood is because they’re back together.  More than that, they apparently have a kid, too.  He showed them pictures of an intense-looking baby wearing a cat-eared cap.

He tries not to look at Raditz and Lapis together.  They’re performing a song tonight, too, with Krillin and Lazuli.  Right now, Lapis is leaning against the wall, that fucking amused, sardonic smile on his face as he looks up at Raditz.  How he slides his long, slender fingers through his thick mane of hair.

“I bet some of this is your baby hair,” he says.

And Raditz laughs and, to Broly, it feels like salt water on a cut.

“You okay?”

He turns and Turles is there.  He’s holding a cigarette between two fingers and the smoke smells weird.  It isn’t weed--when you’re in a band with Kakarrot, you get used to that smell quickly--and Broly wrinkles his nose.

“What is that?”

“Cigarette laced with coke.” Turles waggles his brows.

“Turles.” His voice sounds as it normally does but he puts as much concern as he can in it.

“What?” he asks, eyes wide with feigned innocent. “I’m here for a good time, not a long time.”

He stares at him until Turles sighs and puts his cigarette out on his tongue.  Broly doesn’t know why he always has to do the absolute most but he figures that if he didn’t, then he wouldn’t be Turles.  He tucks the cigarette into the pocket of his leather jacket and nods towards Raditz and Lapis.

“You never answered, by the way.  Are you okay?”

He shrugs, not actually knowing the answer.

“It’s for the best.”

“What is?”

“That you didn’t work out.  Trust me.”

He does suppose that when it comes to Raditz, Turles is the expert.

“Inter-band relationships don’t end well anyway.  I mean, this isn’t us just fucking around anymore.  You feel that, yeah?”

Broly nods.  He isn’t quite following him but he gets it.  He doesn’t think he’s over Raditz or that he will be for a while.  He’s been into him for so long--since high school--that it’s almost like a habit.  He doesn’t know what he’s like when he’s not pining for him from afar.

“Yeah,” he echoes and he hears how hollow his own voice is.

Turles claps him on the shoulder and squeezes him gently.

“Hey,” he says and his voice sounds softer than usual.

Broly looks down towards him and he sees the expression and it’s not...pity, but it’s something else.  Kindness?  He’s never really seen Turles when he isn’t smirking in some way.

“It sucks,” he says. “Like let’s not pretend it doesn’t but would you rather he have faked it?”

“No.”

He looks away after he says it, not really wanting to talk about it.

“So find someone who really cares about you, Broles.” He sees him shrug out of the corner of his eye. “Not that Raditz doesn’t.  I mean, like, in that love way, yeah?  You deserve it.”

Broly looks back at him and Turles is smiling.  It’s a real, full-up smile.

“Don’t look surprised,” he says and cracks up. “Now, come on.  Let’s close this shit out.”

Turles gives his shoulder one last squeeze and, for a reason Broly can’t explain, his stomach flips.

\--

The show goes off without incident.  Maybe the stars aligned or everyone is relieved that it’s over but everything goes well.  They all play truncated sets and then split up for their intermingled numbers.  They’re covers, since no one wants to write material for someone that they’re not going to play with again.  It’s easier and the crowd--and big name label people there--react well to it.  At least, that’s what Kakarrot gathers.  He isn’t performing with anyone so he sits out in the crowd next to ZZTop with Gohan on his lap and Chi-Chi leaning against him.

Broly and Kale perform together, singing “Love Hurts.”  Their honeyed voices swirl together seamlessly as if they’ve been singing together for years.  His brother sings “Love My Way” with Krillin and the twins from Sadistic Dance.  He hasn’t told him yet but Kakarrot’s figured it out that he and Lapis are together.  No one would ever call him a genius but he can  _ see _ perfectly fine.

Vegeta, Caulifla, and Turles all perform “Shattered” together.  After the groups that contain members of his band play, he kind of tunes out.  The crowd seems more tame, sitting and listening and getting up for the shoutier numbers.  It’s different from the anarchy and bedlam of their usual shows.  He’s glad for it, at least, because it means that he doesn’t have to worry about Gohan getting elbowed and the inevitable police report that would result from him or Chi-Chi retaliating.

And then it’s over.

It seems a bit anti-climactic.  It’s been nearly a year and miles upon miles have been put on Turles’s beloved van.  They’ve played sold out shows, done press tours, he’s been punched through the guitar and electrocuted--and it’s done.

“You should go up there,” Chi-Chi tells him. “Do you all do that?  Go up together and bow like in a school play?”

“No?”

“Shit, it’s over?”

The voice that speaks isn’t Chi-Chi’s and Kakarrot looks up to see Bulma standing there.  There’s a baby on her hip who’s studying them all with serious eyes.  Gohan smiles and holds his hand out and, immediately, the kid bursts into his own smile and wraps his chubby little fist around his fingers.  Kakarrot grins and waves in greeting.

“Bulma!  Trunks!”

Chi-Chi frowns. “Trunks?”

“My son,” Bulma clarifies as if that wasn’t readily obvious. “Well, mine and Vegeta’s.”

“Hi, Trunks.  I’m Gohan.  Do you like the music?”

People are shuffling around, not sure if they should leave or not.  Kakarrot himself isn’t sure if he should get back to the van to drive to yet another after party or go up with them.  This show is so much different than the others.  It feels like a showcase or, as Chi-Chi put it, a school play.

“Honestly, I’m glad it’s over,” Bulma says. “The music would be too loud for Trunks’s little ears.”

He seems to react to whatever she said, his little features falling into a scowl that’s eerily reminiscent of his father’s.

“So are you two back together?” Chi-Chi asks.

Bulma nods. “Yeah.  You?”

She looks at Kakarrot and gives him a smile. “Yeah.”

ZZTop has apparently been listening to their entire exchange and Kakarrot is reminded again that he should probably learn his actual name at some point.

“You’re the surly little drunk’s sweet thing?” he asks.

Bulma stares at him. “I...guess?”

He rises and shakes the hand that isn’t supporting Trunks.

“Your boy was drinking like it was the Civil War and the surgeon was coming to chop his arm off but, shit, he can play guitar like a riot.”

Bulma nods, her eyes wide and a fake smile plastered on her face.

“They’re all wild boys,” ZZTop continues.  He jerks a thumb to Kakarrot. “This one right here peed in a trashcan.”

At once, Chi-Chi, Bulma, Gohan, and even Trunks all stare at him.  After a moment, Chi-Chi speaks.

“You peed in a what?”

\--

It’s less of an after party and more of a press thing.  Bloggers and music journalists are everywhere and it makes Vegeta think of that song, “Comfort Eagle.”  All of these dudes in their forties trying to look young and cool.  He stands with Bulma near the makeshift stage and gives their questions terse, curt answers.  Trunks is asleep in her arms, his head resting on her shoulder.  He keeps stealing glances at him, still wondering if he’s real--if this is real.  Part of him is still convinced that he doesn’t deserve any of this: Bulma, Trunks, this apparent fame they’re destined for according to these obnoxious journalists…

Bulma draws the tip of the finger of her free hand down the sleeve of his jacket.

“I still can’t believe you have that tattoo,” she says.”

He jerks his arm away. “I was drunk.”

She gives a knowing, smirky smile.

“I’m flattered,” she says and then makes a kissy face. “You cared that much about me.”

“Eat me.”

Something flashes in her eyes and she says, “Later.”

He can’t help but smirk back at her.

“You should add to it,” she says and shifts Trunks’s weight in her arms. “Know how my name’s in an arch?  Put Trunks’s in one under the crown.”

It’s actually not a bad idea, but if he does it, it’s not going to be done by Turles in a hotel bathroom this time.  Of that much he’s certain.

“Maybe.”

“Oh, stop it.  It’s a good idea.” She bucks him with her hip.

“Yeah, yeah.”

He glances at Trunks, who’s somehow still asleep throughout this all.  He’s drooling a bit but Bulma doesn’t seem to care that it’s pooling on her shoulder.  He draws his finger down his soft cheek and Trunks stirs--but only a little.

“Don’t wake him up,” she warns him. “He’s already got a bit of a temper on him.  Don’t know where he gets it.”

She’s looking at him and Vegeta scowls.

“It’s as much from you as it is from me.”

“What’s that mean?”

Before he can dig himself deeper, they’re interrupted by the arrival of Caulifla.  She’s holding a can of soda and beaming brightly.

“So the rumors are true,” she says, eyes shining. “They  _ did _ let you procreate.  He’s cute.”

He rolls his eyes.

“Bulma, this is Caulifla.  She’s the drummer for U6.”

She grins cheekily.

“I’m also his mistress.”

He scoffs.

“She’s a pain in my ass is what she is.”

Caulifla’s grin broadens and she hooks her arm around his neck.

“I’m also a lesbian--for what it’s worth.”

Bulma looks amused by it all.  Vegeta wiggles out of Caulifla’s hold and glares at her.  He isn’t sure how he ended up with her in his life when before she, like most everyone else, regarded him and the rest of his bandmates as potential liabilities at  _ best. _

“Well, it’s nice to meet you,” Bulma says sweetly.

He gives her a puzzled look and she elbows him discretely with her free arm.

“Free childcare,” she whispers, speaking out of the corner of her mouth.

God, he loves her.

\--

It’s their first show back home, really.  Off the tour and by themselves.  The Monkey’s Paw is packed.  There are familiar faces.  Raditz didn’t expect the other bands to be there but maybe they’re judging them from an audience’s perspective.  It doesn’t matter who’s looking.  They’ve come together tonight.  Maybe it’s because they’ve worked out their personal shit (or are in the process of working it out) but the raw energy remains but the tension is--gone.  They move from song to song.

From his spot behind everyone, he sees it.  He keeps the beat, keeps the pulse.  He breaks drumsticks with his teeth and thrashes his head.  Next to him, he feels Turles with the steady line of his bass.  The jangle of Broly’s keyboards or the blare of when he randomly picks a trumpet up to accent a note in a song.  His brother and Vegeta are in good form, too.  They sing together, cheeks mashed together as they belt into one mic (Kakarrot is, of course, leaning down so he can reach it).  Everything is charged--alive.  They haven’t  _ made it _ yet but they’re making it.

It’s something that they never dreamed of when they started playing Turles’s garage.  When being in a punk band was simply a logical progression of their combined delinquency and lack of direction.  The feeling of being on a precipice that he felt almost a year ago is more potent now.  They aren’t just on the precipice, they’re off it.  They’re falling or they jumped--a great leap into what could potentially be fame.  He still isn’t so sure of it.  Fame doesn’t happen to them: two brothers who grew up in a trailer park, a lanky musical genius, a mentally unstable dethroned prince, and Turles.

They finish the show and it ends with a jagged note shared by the two guitars.  The crowd roars.  People are jumping on tables and grabbing at the stage--at  _ them. _  The five of them stand together, at the edge of the stage.  Kakarrot’s waving wildly, his face stretched wide in a broad grin.  Raditz feels hot leather drape around his shoulders and he knows that it’s Turles.  Broly gives him a smile that’s odd and soft but it reaches his eyes and he thinks they might be getting back to normal--whatever normal is for them, anyway.

He sees the others out in the audience.  His parents standing with that old guy who runs the record shop where Kakarrot works.  Chi-Chi is sitting next to Piccolo from Kame Kami and Gohan is between them.  He’s standing on a bar stool, two tiny fists raised in the air.  It reminds Raditz of when his dad would bring him and Kakarrot here as kids even though that was extremely illegal.  He sees Bulma holding a bottle of beer and clapping her free hand against it in applause.  Cabba’s there, staring moon-eyed at the stage.  Caulifla gives a wild whoop while she holds Kale’s hand.  Interestingly, enough, next to the three of them he spots Vegeta’s brother, Tarble, who’s never been to any of their shows before.

Yamcha is there, being held from behind by Tien.  They’ve made up, apparently.  He sees Krillin with Lazuli and 16 looming over them both.  Lapis is next to her and he wants to catch his eye.  He’s smiling in that Way of his and Raditz feels his heart skip a beat.  He isn’t sure if this will last but he’s willing to see it through.  He wants to see where they go.

The five of them stand there, not sure what to do.  The applause washes over them--the adoration.  It’s still strange.  He’ll never get over the feeling of being positively received at a show.  At the rush and high that getting applause gives him.

“Uh…” Kakarrot glances at him and then back at the crowd.  He leans in towards the microphone stand and says, “So, we’re Apetail.  We’re glad to be back and, uh, look forward to our album coming out...soon, right?  Soon?”

The result is instantaneous and the spell is broken.  Vegeta rolls his eyes dramatically.

“Fuck, you’re terrible at talking to people.”

“Aw, come on!”

Turles throws his head back and howls and even Broly gives a little laugh.  Raditz looks at them all and back at the crowd.  Not sure what else to do, he shrugs.


	12. Epilogue: But You Still Don't Want to Leave Before the End of the Movie

Chi-Chi reaches up towards the cupboard, straining as she tries to lean forward as much as she can.  Why the birthday candles are up here, she’ll never know.  She  _ told _ Kakarrot to get them down earlier today but he forgot.  She would be more aggravated but he  _ has _ been busy lately and it’s made him even spacier than usual.  That they’re all able to get together today is a small miracle.

“Chi-Chi, let me.”

She relaxes against the counter and smiles her thanks as Gine reaches up to get the candles.

“Sorry.  I didn’t think it’d be that much of a strain.”

Chi-Chi puts both hands on her stomach.  It’s been harder getting around as she nears her due date--now less than a month away.

“How’s little Goten?” Gine asks.

She places her hand over top of Chi-Chi’s and smiles.

“Wearing me out,” she admits. “Gohan was never this rough.”

She nods.

“Kakarrot was the same way.  Raditz was an easy pregnancy despite it being my first.”

_ And despite being fifteen, _ Chi-Chi wisely doesn’t add.

“But Kakarrot, god, that boy could  _ kick.” _

She laughs.  Gine places the candles on the counter for a moment and looks at her.

“So...you two gonna make it official?”

Marriage.  Since they announced she was pregnant (it’s the first time Chi-Chi ended up on internet blogs even if the headlines were things like “Apetail Guitarist’s Longtime Girlfriend Expecting Second Child”) everyone has been hounding them about getting married.  She has no idea if or when it’s going to happen.  Kakarrot, at least, hasn’t indicated anything.

She shrugs. “So much is happening.  At the very least it won’t be until after Goten’s born.”

Gine nods.

“Makes sense.  Me and Bardock didn’t get married until after Kakarrot was born.” She pauses for a moment and adds, “Then again, neither of us were eighteen yet.”

She picks the candles back up and hands the pack of them to Chi-Chi.  She extracts the right amount and sticks them into the cake.  She leans over the counter into the living room.

“Anyone have a lighter?”

The result is instantaneous.  Turles, Nappa, Kakarrot, Bardock, and Vegeta all whip out their lighters at once.  Chi-Chi sighs and rolls her eyes.

_ At least they aren’t doing it in the house… _

Turles is closest so she takes the lighter from him and lights the candles.

“Everyone come to the table,” she calls. “It’s time for cake.”

Honestly, she’s fairly certain that this isn’t enough cake for everyone but as long as Gohan gets a slice, she doesn’t care.  As if reading her thoughts, the baby kicks her gently.

“You, too,” she promises.

Kakarrot carries Gohan over and everyone crowds around the table while they sing to him.  Trunks claps his hands from his spot on Vegeta’s lap and then, when the song concludes, leans forward to try and blow them out himself.

“No, baby,” Bulma says and gently pushes him back. “It’s Gohan’s cake.”

Gohan ponders his wish for a moment and then blows out the candles.  Everyone applauds and Gine comes around with the knife to cut it.  Slices are divvied up and everyone’s able to get one.  She’s certain that people will want more but  _ she _ bought the cake and if Kakarrot’s still hungry, he could have bought a larger one himself.  The record company is giving him a check soon, or so King Kai says.  And he should, Chi-Chi thinks.  Both their single and the album itself have hit the top 20--on the alternative charts, but that’s still huge.  She still doesn’t like their music but she’s proud of him all the same.

Broly moves (and she’s honestly surprised that he’s here at all) so she can sit with her cake and everyone eats in relative quiet.  It’s so startlingly normal considering how things have changed and how they continue to change.  On Gohan’s last birthday, she and Kakarrot had been broken up and he’d taken him to the zoo by himself while she had to work.

Turles tucks an unlit cigarette behind his ear, his new industrial piercing flashing under the lights.  As usual, he seems amused by everything as he sits leaning back with his hands folded behind his head.

“This isn’t very punk rock,” he says as he constantly asserts himself as the authority of what is and isn’t punk rock.

“Shut up.” Raditz shoves him but his voice holds no heat and they crack up, grinning at one another.

“Don’t eat Trunks’s cake!” Bulma exclaims.

“He’s not eating it.”

“Oh, my God, you’re literally taking food from your son’s mouth.”

She and Vegeta are laughing, too, as they argue.  Everything seems--good.  The only outlier seems to be Lapis, who’s sitting in the shadow of his much larger boyfriend, not speaking.  Truthfully, Chi-Chi doesn’t know how to approach him and it’s an entire ordeal to stand up so she doesn’t say anything.

A knock comes at the door and Gohan jumps down from his chair.

“I’ll get it!”

Before anyone can stop him, he darts across the living room and opens the door.  Piccolo, the drummer from Kame Kami, stands on the other side, holding an enormous, wrapped package.

“Hi, Mr. Piccolo!”

Chi-Chi furrows a brow.  She doesn’t remember inviting him--in fact, she barely knows him.  Gohan adores him and says that he’s teaching him to play drums but that’s the extent of their interactions.  She shares a confused look with Kakarrot who stands from the table.

“Uh, hey.”

Piccolo shifts his gaze from side to side over top of the package.

“Um...did you not know I was coming?”

Kakarrot shakes his head.

“I invited him!” Gohan says proudly. “I texted him from mommy’s phone.”

Chi-Chi sighs. “How many times do we have to tell you not to take my phone?”

Gohan turns and shrugs. “So maybe change your passcode to something harder.”

She can’t believe her baby is already turning into a delinquent.  She  _ knows _ that she shouldn’t have started taking him to Apetail’s shows.

\--

“You probably hated that.”

Lapis shrugs.

“I didn’t,” he assures him. “Your family is just much different from mine.”

It’s a warm night and so Raditz decided to walk back to their apartment building.  Lapis isn’t one to walk hand in hand but they’re close on the sidewalk.

“Is it?”

He isn’t sure what else to say.  Lapis doesn’t talk about his family.  He’ll mention things he and his sister did but never anyone else.  Raditz has been surrounded by friends with shitty family lives so he’s never pressed.

“My family is...cold,” he says. “We weren’t allowed to have emotional outbursts.”

He falls silent and Raditz puts his arm around him.

“They wanted us to be like robots,” he continues and his voice sounds flat, like he’s speaking from somewhere else.

“You’re not a robot.”

He gives a chuckle. “No wonder you don’t write your songs.”

Raditz bumps him with his hip.

“Oh, be quiet.”

Lapis leans into him and he says nothing more about his family.  He’s glad, though, that he’s started opening up even though it clearly makes him uncomfortable to do so.

“Is anyone at your place?”

“No.  And I have the bedroom now since Vegeta moved out.”

Lapis’s lips curve up in a smile. “Good.”

At the corner, he stops and takes Raditz’s hand.

“Hey.  Look up.”

He does and he can see the vague haze of stars.  It’s hard to see them in the city but he can see some pinpricks of light.

“Most of them are dead,” Lapis says. “Someone told me that once.”

Raditz laughs and looks back down.  When he does, Lapis kisses him.  The light changes and they stay kissing on this dark, nearly deserted sidewalk.  When they part, Lapis tucks the tips of his fingers in the collar of Raditz’s t-shirt.  It’s one Lapis gave him that’s set up like a travel advertisement that reads “Welcome to Twin Peaks.”  When he gave it to him, he said with a wink and an arch smile that he knows how much he likes the show.

“Let’s go then,” he says. “And then I’ll get to say I fucked you before you were famous.”

He says it plainly but there’s a smile tugging on the corner of his mouth.  Raditz laughs.

“Well, if I have my way, you can fuck me after I’m famous, too.”

\--

He’s bent over his guitar on the bed, staring at the scraps of paper in front of him.  Bits of lyrics he’s scribbled while ignoring himself on the playback.  King Kai nearly killed him when he would leave the room.  Like it matters.  They had a room full of producers to hear him and remix their vocals so what’s the fucking point?

Vegeta throws his pencil down and strums out a chord, reaching with the tip of his pinkie.  It’s a weird little bend he’s trying and every time he doesn’t quite get it, he gets more frustrated.  Growling a bit, he shoves his guitar to the side and, with a sweep of his arm, all of the scraps are on the floor.

“I’m not picking those up.”

Bulma comes out of the bathroom smelling like strawberry shampoo and her yuzu moisturizer.  The combination of smells is almost cloyingly sweet but it doesn’t bother him.  It also doesn’t bother him with how little it bothers him.

She’s wearing one of their concert t-shirts and a pair of cotton underwear and he still can’t believe it.  That he was able to actually unfuck what he did and that they’re together.  They have a family--for the first time, he has an actual family.  Dwelling on it too much, though, is a level of sappiness he can’t bring himself towards so he just acknowledges her with an incline of his head.

Bulma crawls into bed and takes his hands in hers.

“You were playing,” she says. “Your hands are all warm.”

She squeezes them lightly, careful to avoid the scars on the back of his right hand.

“I’m trying--”

“Shhh.” She starts kissing his neck. “Later.  Now we have ‘us’ time.”

It’s been hectic.  King Kai’s been making rumblings of a new tour, there’s been press and promotion of the new album and appearances on shows,  _ playing _ shows at local bars, still.  More than that, he and Bulma moved into their own place only a couple months ago.  The most action he’s gotten was when she snuck onto the filming of some hackneyed, “alternative” version of  _ TRL _ or  _ Top of the Pops _ (so bad that he doesn’t even remember the damn show’s name) to give him a blowjob in their green room.

“What’s the new song about?” she asks, her breath is minty from her toothpaste on warm on his neck. “Is it about me?”

Vegeta can’t see her but he knows she’s batting her eyes by the way he can feel the ends of her eyelashes against his flushed skin.

“They almost all are,” he admits. “But no.  I don’t know what it’s about yet.”

It’s only a partial lie.  The song’s about him, which sounds more full of himself than he means it to be.  It’s about sorting his shit, and dealing with his mental mood swings, about his mom and his dad and the fucking Tennessee Williams play that was his childhood.

“Mmm.” She presses herself against his back and he finally turns his head so they can kiss properly. “Come to bed.”

He does and they do and afterwards, Bulma turns out the light and he lets the staticky sound of breathing on Trunks’s baby monitor lull him to sleep.

\--

It’s hot out and the air smells like grilling meat.  Broly flaps the open ends of his flannel to try and get some air to circulate.  Turles gives him a bemused look and takes a swig from whatever he has wrapped in a brown paper bag.  He knows better than to offer him any and so Broly is left to take sips from his chaser, which is just a bottle of something dubiously called “lemon drink.”  The name of it prompted an entire philosophical discussion in the liquor store about the difference between “lemon drink” and “lemonade” between Turles and the grizzled old man behind the counter who wanted nothing to do with him.

He fingers the figaro chain around his neck and then flattens his palm against it.  He feels antsy, which he has around Turles for some time and he can’t figure out why.  He’s known him the longest.  Turles is, in fact, the one who introduced him to everyone else.  The one who came to get him from the motel when he left home.

He isn’t foolish enough to think he has feelings for him.  He was right: inter-band relationships don’t work and getting a crush on the ex-boyfriend of your unrequited love is a level of pathetic that Broly doesn’t want to hit.

“It was a nice party,” he says.

Turles bobs his head.  They’re on a bench, looking out at the lakefront.  Mosquitos buzz in the air and every now and then Broly has to slap one that lands on his arm.

“I think Chi-Chi almost went into labor when she saw that Piccolo got Gohan a drumset.”

It had been nice, Broly thought.  Purple with green drum skins and sized for a child.  But he could see Chi-Chi’s point.  Giving a child a drumset when a baby was on the way is not a good idea.  Still, Gohan looked giddy.  Despite his formerly eternal dislike for Kakarrot, it was hard not to like Gohan.  He was a sweet kid and it’s not like he chose his dad.  Broly also could never bring himself to be mean to a child.

“So what do we do now?” he asks.

Turles shrugs.

“Dunno.  It’s up to our fearless leader.  But you feel it, don’t you, Broles?” He gets that feral, almost predatory look that he adopts when he’s excited or has an idea. “Shit’s happening.  We’re a top 20 band.  We’re gonna be fucking famous.”

Broly nods and takes a sip of his drink.  It’s all sugar and cloyingly artificial lemon and it makes him wince as he swallows.

“Y’ever think we’d get famous?  Like not even when we formed the band.” Turles pauses to tip his bottle towards his mouth.  When he finishes, he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Like, when we all met.  It’s fucking wild.”

He grins broadly and reaches a hand out to tug gently on one of Broly’s earrings.

“I’m glad I’m making it with you, Broles.”

“Me?”

“Yeah.  I dunno.  With all the shit with Radi and Kakarrot being a flake and Vegeta being Vegeta...you’re always there, doing your thing.  It’s nice.  I’m glad.”

He’s smiling at him in a different way now and Broly ducks his face behind his bottle, a defensive maneuver he picked up from Kale.

“C’mon.” Turles hops to his feet. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

His grin is brazen.

“Wherever.”

When Broly takes his extended hand, he feels a little jolt in his chest--one he tries to push away.  He luckily doesn’t have time to dwell on it because Turles lets out an excited whoop and takes off into the night, dragging Broly along behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> vertigoats.tumblr.com


End file.
